
Glass H3Y3 4-^6 

Book .Tf rSs- 

Copyrightl^? 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



Sunshine and Shadow 

on the 

Tibetan Border 



By 
FLORA BEAL SHELTON 



Cincinnati : 
Foreign Christian Missionary Society 



-^ 



1&. 



COPYRIGHT, 1912, 
FOREIGN CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 






©CU332029 
Kn t 



) 



DEDICATED 
TO 

WHOSE THUNDER I STOLE AND WHOSE ENCOURAGE- 
MENT WHEN THINGS WENT WRONG MADE 
THIS WORK POSSIBLE. 



Preface 

A GREAT man might write this preface and tell you 
a lot of great and good things about this little book ; 
then you would be bitterly disappointed when you 
turned the pages and found only real things; things 
that happen every day; hard things, prosaic things, 
suffering and pain ; suffering and death with no hope 
of a hereafter, pain without cessation and relief. Such 
things as these are in the book, but also the wish goes 
through and through it that the tiny golden thread of 
love, of the Infinite Love that prompts all good, may 
shine for you and teach a greater meaning to living 
and the greater usefulness of a life spent in the serv- 
ice of the Nazarene. Flora Beai, Shei/ton. 



Contents. 



PAGE 



Foreword, - 11 

How Our Workers Came to Go to Tibet, - IS 
What and Where Is Tibet, - - - -22 

How to Get to Tibet, 31 

Tibetans without Medical Science, - - 43 
The Entering Wedge, Medicine, 52 

Itinerating on the Roof of the World, - 58 

How We Live, 69 

The Man with the Broken Head, - 78 

A Tibetan Sunday-School, ... 82 

A Mission D ay-School, 89 

"Our Little Doctor," .... 97 

Tibetan Women and Their Home Life, - - 109 
Tibetan Characteristics, - - - - 117 

Results, 123 

Good-Bye to Batang, 129 

The Present Situation, One Year Later, 

the Close of 1912, 133 



List of Illustrations 

Mr. Ogden Baptizing First Converts, Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

"Johnny," 16 

Nomad Tent, - - .... 24 ^ 

Chair Travel, ----.. 24 

A House Boat, 32 

Missionaries at Batang, - - - -32 

A Chain Bridge, - - - - - 38 

Pine Trees, - - 40 

Tibetan Teacher, - 44 

A Load of Tea, ------ 48 

A "Chorten," 48 

"Tsuden," - 56 

Tibetan Woman Carrying Water, - - 56 

Down the Yangtse in a Coracle, - - 60 

Musk-deer Hair Cushions, - - - 60 

A Black Tent, 64 

A Group of Robbers, - 64 

Our Mud Palace, 72 

A Tibetan House, 72 

9 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

The Man with the Broken Head, - - 80 

The First Sunday School, 84 
Pile of Carved Mani Stones, - - - 84 

A Tibetan Beggar, - - - - - 88 

Mr. Ogden with Prayer Wheel, - - - 96 

House in which Dr. Loftis Died, 96 

A Tibetan Tower, 112 

Batang Hairdressing, - - - - 112 

Jan Tsen's Son, 128 

Over a Snow Pass, 128 

New Missionaries, 136 



io 



Foreword 

OUR PIONEER MISSIONARY. 

"Go Ye." 

Away to the north traveled a man with a woman 
up the Han River for days and days, then in wooden- 
wheeled carts drawn by oxen over the rutty roads 
of China, on and on to the north until they arrived 
at the Monastery of Kumbum. The man was a lin- 
guist, the woman a doctor. For a few years they 
studied, taught, and healed the people there, but it 
was not enough. They had gone to that portion of 
China with one aim, to reach the city of Lassa; with 
one hope, to take the Christ to the Tibetans ; with one 
ideal, to plant a mission in that land. After a time the 
little son was born, and when he was a year and a half 
old it was thought they might go out. Medicines, 
food, bedding, and all they possessed were loaded 
upon the pack animal and the long journey begun. 
Over mountains in cold and snow and hardships 
that can not be known, for days the little caravan 
wandered, slowly, slowly, yet preaching, doctoring ; "in 
perils oft," until finally most of the friends who had 
known and started with them had turned back and 
they were among strangers, in a strange land. One 
day, high upon a range of mountains, the little lad 

ii 



FOREWORD 

sickened. It was too great, that journey for him, and 
he died. With sad hearts and trembling hands the 
box that held the little store of medicines was emptied, 
and the father and mother laid him to sleep on the 
mountain-side alone, and they went on. Days and 
days more of travel until they had lost all they had 
and were left footsore and weary, alone and walking, 
as they could get no help from the Tibetans, who 
feared them. One afternoon they neared a village 
and the man said to the woman, "Wait here and I'll 
wade the river and get help from the village on the 
other side." The woman waited until the shadows 
grew long, but he did not return. Often she said to 
me, as we saw a mountain-side, grass-covered and 
brown, "That looks just like the mountain-side where 
he left me alone that day and never returned." The 
rivers are swift in that land among the snows. The 
woman waited, and then saw that she must help her- 
self and find some help or shelter for the night. She 
found a few to aid her, and finally, with the help of a 
friendly Chinese trader, came to safety and arrived at 
Tachienlu, where an English mission family took her 
in and cared for her. In a few months she came home 
to Canada and America with the ideal still not for- 
gotten, and though broken in health, weak in body, 
with a zeal, heaven-inspired, interested people in the 
land of Tibet. In a short time — a space of a few 
years — she was ready to return, sent back again to es- 
tablish the mission of which she and the man had so 
long dreamed. It was not as she had planned, but 
God's ways are not always ours. Not long did she 

12 



FOREWORD 

stay with the mission, for her work was done. The 
little station was established, and she saw the two fam- 
ilies there before she left it. Then she was permitted 
to come home to Canada to die. Widely separated 
are the three last resting places, but there — over there, 
there is no separation and no darkness. Dr. Susie 
Rijnhart is the woman of which I write. 



13 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 



CHAPTER I 



How Our Workers Came to Go to 
Tibet 

"The dice of God are always loaded." 

Emerson was right when he used the words at 
the head of this chapter. In spite of all forces and 
all human plans the one great plan is always carried 
through. The Foreign Christian Missionary Society, 
when appointing Dr. Shelton to go to Nankin, China, 
to relieve Dr. Macklin, did not dream of a mission sta- 
tion in Tibet — nor did we who afterward went to that 
far field. 

It was in the year 1899 that the Disciples in Amer- 
ica first heard of the country of Tibet and its need of 
help, and began to demand that a mission be opened in 
that country. Dr. Susie Rijnhart had come out from 
that land alone, having lost her husband and baby 
there, and for four years had been speaking and plead- 
ing for workers for this remote field. Her own health 
was not of the best, but a determination to plant a 
mission among Tibetans never left her and she planned 
better than she knew. 

IS 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

In 1902 she spoke at the Iowa State Convention of 
the Disciples of Christ, held in Des Moines, and raised 
six hundred dollars, with which she bought medical 
instruments for use among the Tibetans. At this time 
Dr. Rijnhart had been under appointment by the For- 
eign Christian Missionary Society for more than a 
year, waiting and asking for some one to go with her. 
She wished to go at once to Tachienlu, West China, 
and wanted a doctor and his wife to accompany her, 
as she believed that the Gospel might be preached to 
the Tibetans more easily through the medium of med- 
ical work. 

The Secretary of the Foreign Society wrote and 
asked Dr. Shelton if he would consider going to Tibet, 
as another man could be more easily found for Nankin. 
As a matter of fact, Tachienlu sounded little farther 
than Nankin to us, and we telegraphed we would go. 
On September 27th we arrived in San Francisco and 
met Dr. Rijnhart for the first time. As there was no 
minister in the party Dr. Shelton was ordained by W. 
M. White, J. Durham, and E. W. Darst of the First 
Christian Church in the city. Dr. Rigdon presented 
us with some medical books and a number of instru- 
ments before we sailed. 

As the steamship China left the pier and we realized 
that we were out in that big, big water and America 
was fading away, it seemed very lonely, indeed, and 
we, that is, I, was dreadfully homesick, but it soon 
changed to another kind of sickness which kept us 
fully occupied for a while. During the days of sea- 
sickness, and afterwards throughout the long sea voy- 

16 




"Johnny," formerly our cook, now a most efficient medical as- 
sistant, who has made eight trips entirely across China in the 
interests of the mission. 



HOW OUR WORKERS CAME TO GO TO TIBET 

age, we were greatly comforted and cheered by a 
dear old lady and gentleman who were going back 
to China to end their days as missionaries among their 
chosen people. 

When we reached Nankin one of our Chinese 
young men, a Christian, a graduate of Christian Col- 
lege, a Chinese scholar as well, who spoke English, 
volunteered to go to Tachienlu with us. He was a 
most valuable man, and it meant much for him to leave 
his work and his people and go with us. His preach- 
ing was the finest that had ever been heard in Nankin, 
and great crowds came to hear him. 

Last, but not least of our party was "Johnny," an 
English-speaking Chinese cook and the most useful 
man of all. 

We reached Tachienlu, March 15, 1904, after a 
long, difficult journey overland of nearly three months. 
We arrived in the midst of a snowstorm, and it seemed 
pretty cold to the two southern-bred Chinamen. Mr. 
Moyes, of the China Inland Mission, met us with the 
mail and we had letters from home. He had kindly 
fixed up some rooms in a Tibetan inn for our accom- 
modation, and papered the walls with Chinese paper, 
but they would not let him scrub the floors, as the land- 
lady said it never had been scrubbed and she could n't 
let it be done. So we put matting on the floor to keep 
the dirt from getting between our toes and lived there 
until in May, when we got a house of our own. 

Dr. Rijnhart at once opened a dispensary, and Dr. 
Shelton and I began to study Chinese. 

In the fall of 1904, when we wanted to study 

2 17 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

Tibetan, all the printed helps we had were a small 
primer by Mr. Amundsen and the New Testament, 
written in the classical Tibetan, which was not at all 
like the spoken language. The boys in the mission 
school had nothing at all. Their first lessons must be 
written by a Tibetan teacher and committed. So the 
Society was asked to send a man, especially for liter- 
ary work, and we were glad, indeed, to hear that Mr. 
and Mrs. J. C. Ogden, of Kentucky University, were 
appointed May 12, 1905, and were to sail early in Sep- 
tember for China. 

As Dr. Rijnhart was engaged to Mr. Moyes, and 
it was only a matter of a few months until she would 
be leaving the mission, we rejoiced greatly to hear 
of the new people coming. 

In September Dr. Shelton and Johnny left 
Tachienlu for Shanghai to escort the new people to the 
border. Mr. Moyes and Dr. Rijnhart went to Chentu 
and were married in October, 1905. Mrs. Moyes re- 
signed from the mission in December, 1906. After 
the return of Dr. Shelton with the Ogdens, Mr. Yang, 
the Chinese evangelist, left for Nankin to care for his 
wife and mother, so the mission was only a small band 
at this time — four of us, besides our baby Dorris and 
Johnny. 

In September, 1906, Mr. Ogden and Dr. Shelton 
started for Batang, five hundred miles from Ta- 
chienlu, on the Tibetan border. There was a ces- 
sation in the fighting; the country was practically 
tranquil and once more under Chinese control. Gen- 
eral Joa had just captured Shangchen and was still 

18 



HOW OUR WORKERS CAME TO GO TO TIBET 

stationed there. When the two men arrived in Batang 
they were most kindly received and found many old 
friends and acquaintances who had been to the Ta- 
chienlu dispensary. 

They stayed four days, examining the country and 
studying the conditions of the place and people, one 
day going down the Yangtse River, on another going 
up the valley to see the country in that direction. 
They found the population of the city to be wholly 
Tibetan, outside of the officials and soldiers, and that 
all the inhabitants in the surrounding country were 
Tibetans except a few Chinese, who had lived there for 
thirty or forty years and had even forgotten their own 
language. 

So close to the border of Tibet was the city of Ba- 
tang that they believed more Tibetan work could be 
done and more Tibetans reached than at Tachienlu, 
and though travelers were not permitted to cross the 
line at that time, they believed that in a few years they 
could safely go into the country, and would be invited 
to do so, which has proved to be true. 

During the spring of 1907 a suggestion came from 
the Society to close Tibetan work and join the China 
Mission, on the plains in East China, as it was so diffi- 
cult to get men and supplies to such a distant station. 
Dr. Shelton and Mr. Ogden both wrote, uncondition- 
ally refusing to leave their beloved Tibetans and sacri- 
fice the years of study and the friends they had made. 

Then a letter came from the President of the So- 
ciety saying he had been praying that the answer 
would be as they had sent it, and granting them per- 

19 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

mission to go eighteen days farther inland to the city 
of Batang and there establish the mission perma- 
nently. That meant some preparation. So the two 
men went to Chungking to purchase two years' sup- 
plies of soap, sugar, candles, etc., and buy saws and 
tools for the cutting of timber and building of houses ; 
for in the new land they must become hewers of wood, 
drawers of water, brick-makers, lumber-cutters, tile- 
makers, furniture-builders, teaching the Chinese car- 
penters how to build even a wash tub before a good 
bath could be taken. 

Mr. Ogden brought the supplies up river and came 
through Chentu, hiring three Chinese carpenters to 
help in the proposed building. 

Boxes holding seventy- five or eighty pounds must 
be made and packed with household goods, medicine, 
instruments, books, bedding, pictures, and dishes. 
The boxes were covered with wet skin which soon 
dries and becomes very hard and keeps all dampness 
from the contents. This covering also prevents the 
boxes from bursting to pieces if a carrier yak should 
get on a stampede. 

We left Tachienlu July 7, 1908, and reached Ba- 
tang July 24th. Johnny had already been there and 
had cleaned two rooms in half of a Tibetan mudhouse 
for us to occupy. Mr. and Mrs. Ogden prepared to 
go with us, but decided to wait for Dr. Loftis, a new 
medical missionary under appointment. Their plans 
were again changed, however, and they came on to 
Batang, arriving October 31st. We were all together 
once more and looking for the new doctor's coming. 

20 



HOW OUR WORKERS CAME TO GO TO TIBET 

Pioneers are very necessary, but I like to read 
about them much better than I like to be one, and we 
were the pioneers of our Mission and of all Missions 
to Tibet, with the exception of Mr. Muir and wife of 
the China Inland Mission, who were six days ahead of 
us in arriving at Batang, and who were joined some 
two years later by Mr. J. Huston Edgar and wife, with 
little Elsie and Chalmers, also of the same mission. 
Mail comes once a month, a man is hired to make the 
trip to Tachienlu and return, and it takes about thirty 
days, unless he is a very fast walker. The city is 
Oriental and has everything that goes with that word : 
dirt, heat, flies, mangy dogs, naked babies, half- 
clothed men and women, no rain for months, and the 
chaff from the wheat threshing flying everywhere. 
But our trials are few ; they might be more. So long 
as we are all well I do not mind. Then there are 
the babies — bless them! — they never allow us to get 
lonesome. 

The first great event that happened at Batang was 
the birth of little Ruth Ogden, the first foreign baby 
born in that city. There are three babies now in the 
mission — Dorris, Dorothy, and Ruth. They do n't at 
all mind the dirt, and the heat, and what we call dis- 
comfort. It does n't matter to them if the streets and 
roads are feet deep in dry dust, or whether it is warm, 
or whether it is cold, they are always happy and make 
the sun shine for us. 



21 



CHAPTER II. 

What and Where Is Tibet? 

"And whether crowned or crownless when I fall, 
It matters not, so God's work is done." 

"Tibet is a high tableland entirely surrounded by 
mountains, inhabited by nomad tribes," is what the 
geography used to say, and that is about right as far 
as it goes. There might be a few additions, for and 
against, but it answers very well for this unknown 
land which most travelers are compelled to see around 
the edges with little dips inside, while very few have 
been permitted to get in at all, let alone stay in 
for any length of time. 

The country of Tibet is a great tableland with 
very few valleys below ten thousand feet, and many 
mountain ranges traversing it that are much higher 
than that, and in them, perhaps, will be found the cul- 
minating point of the world, though as yet no traveler 
has proved that true. 

Surrounding this plateau is China on the east, with 
her dislike of foreign customs and people, India and 
Nepaul on the south, Nepaul being a Chinese prov- 
ince by conquest, a large army capturing it about one 
hundred and thirty years ago. Nepaul pays tribute 
every thirteen or fourteen years to China, its people 
marching the long, weary way from that country to 

22 



WHAT AND WHERE IS TIBET 

Pekin, taking two or three years to make the journey 
because China demands it, that they may see her 
vastness and power. The journey could be made by 
sea in six months. Their representatives have trav- 
eled this long journey heretofore with hundreds of men 
and animals carrying their loads of coral-shelled co- 
coanuts, jewels, and elephant tusks as tribute to the 
emperor. 

India has forbidden the entrance to Tibet of even 
the Moravian missionaries, who have camped on the 
southern borders for more than fifty years awaiting a 
chance to enter. Persia and Turkestan, with their 
exclusive heathendom, are on the west. Russia is on 
the north, in her inaccessible sullenness. So it is well 
named the "Hermit Nation," for all forces, natural 
and physical, have tended and helped to make it so. 

Yet early in the fourteenth century a Jesuit Father 
is supposed to have reached Lassa, the sacred capital. 
Then in two or three centuries more Catholics entered 
the country, and later an Englishman or two came 
close to the Sacred City. In 1844 and 1846 Hue and 
Babet, French missionaries, reached Lassa from China, 
but were soon sent out again. 

The Tibetans have been very jealous for their 
country, as in their sacred books the lamas warn the 
people that the foreigner must not be allowed to settle 
in their land, for if they do, their own religion is 
doomed. But of late years a native of India, Nain 
Singh, who studied the language in that country, went 
to Lassa disguised as a lama and added much to the 
knowledge of that forbidden land before he was dis- 

23 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

covered and deported. Also oar own Rockhill, writ- 
ing of his travels on the eastern border, has given 
much knowledge to the world. And the Swedish trav- 
eler Sven Hedin, who has been in from the west, 
discovered the sources of the three rivers, the Indus, 
the Sutlej, and the Brahmaputra, has written much on 
his travels, and his books are of inestimable value in 
giving to the world knowledge of Tibet. 

The country, being so high, is cold, though to the 
south the valleys are warm and sunny, and barley, 
wheat, and buckwheat are raised by the people who 
live there. However, the higher portions are cold, so 
cold that the punishment often given to criminals is to 
send them to a warm region, just as the Chinese send 
theirs from the plains where there is plenty of rice and 
sunshine into the bitter cold of the mountains. Where 
it is impossible to raise grain the people live in black 
tents of yak hair and tend their cattle, and sheep, and 
goats ; eating butter, cheese, and milk, and raw meat, 
clad in their skin gowns, hardy and wild as their own 
yak and native land. 

The source of the Yangtse is still to be discovered. 
It extends away into mountains beyond Batang per- 
haps a thousand miles. 

The population of Tibet is estimated from three to 
six million, and the many lamaseries, or monasteries, 
of Buddhist priests contain perhaps one-seventh of the 
population. 

Gold has been found along the eastern border and 
a little lead and iron, but no coal or silver as yet. A 
caravan route of trade has been established for two or 

24 




A nomad tent in a valley among the mountains. 




Chair travel on the road to Batang. 



WHAT AND WHERE IS TIBET 

three hundred years from Tachienlu to Lassa, the 
Chinese tea and cloth being traded for the Tibetan 
furs, musk, yak-tails, and borax. Among the larger 
lamaseries is the one at Litang, containing thirty- 
seven hundred lamas. The one at Batang had almost 
three thousand, but was entirely destroyed at the time 
of the Chinese invasion and will never be rebuilt. The 
ruins of the lamasery, as they stand now, cover nine 
acres, while a little distance below is a steep cliff, above 
a sharp bend in the river, where no Chinamen dared go 
in those days when it was in the height of its power, 
or they were unceremoniously dumped over the cliff 
into the river. 

There are still many small monasteries around on 
the mountains, but no large ones, and it is the policy 
of the Chinese Government to keep the number of 
priests below one hundred in each one, so that they 
can never grow strong and rebel against the Chinese 
again. 

Perhaps a bit of Batang history would not be un- 
interesting, as our mission is so closely connected with 
the country, and the political events as they occur have 
more or less influence on the station. In the winter 
of 1904 and 1905 there was trouble at Tyling, some five 
days' journey to the north and west of Tachienlu, over 
the mining of gold. The Chinese demanded the open- 
ing of the mines and sent men to dig the metal. The 
Tibetans did not want the mineral dug, as they said 
the Chinese would take all the seed away and there 
would n't be any more gold. So government troops 
were sent in, and some fighting occurred, with a few 

25 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

killed on each side, with this result, that the Tyling 
lamas sent emissaries to the other monasteries and 
among the people in the west, asking aid to help them 
throw off the Chinese yoke. 

For a hundred years or more China has been fight- 
ing in this part of her dominion, sending in a few sol- 
diers and advancing one step at a time, holding the 
conquered territory. At this time Chinese Commis- 
sioner Fong was stationed at Batang, and the Tibetans 
refused to believe that he was the real representative 
of the emperor, either knowingly or unknowingly 
taking that position. His policy was to limit the num- 
ber of priests in the lamaseries; so he announced the 
fact that three hundred lamas were enough for any 
city the size of Batang, and asked the rest, about 
twenty-five hundred, to take unto themselves wives 
and go to work. 

That sounds all right in theory, but the lamas do 
not yield to that kind of advice very readily, as they are 
supposed to abjure all women, do no work, and lead 
holy lives of meditation and prayer. So these priests 
went among the people up and down the river valleys 
and in the vicinity of Batang, rousing them, inciting 
them to fight against the Chinese, so that in April, 
1905, relations between the Chinese and Tibetans were 
getting very much strained. Commissioner Fong was 
afraid to go and afraid to stay. He had a bodyguard 
of about sixty soldiers and a great show of foreign 
guns, but not a single round of ammunition. Finally 
he decided to flee, and one morning he started. The 
people knew he was afraid. He had gone only a 

26 



WHAT AND WHERE IS TIBET 

little way from the city when the Tibetans com- 
pletely surrounded him, coming down from the moun- 
tains and up the valleys, from behind him and in 
front of him, all shouting and firing from every place, 
at one time, so it seemed. His chair-bearers were in- 
stantly killed, then all of his soldiers, as they were 
neither able to run or fire a single shot. Fong got 
out of his chair, turned his face toward Pekin, wor- 
shiped the emperor, whose relation he was, and so "ko- 
towing," died. These men, all but the commissioner, 
are buried where they fell, close together, a tablet 
marking the immense tomb, which is built of stone and 
the carved slabs from a "mani" pile. This occurrence 
greatly encouraged the rebellious Tyling lamas and all 
the Tibetans. 

In Tachienlu, where the mission was located at 
this time, excitement ran high, rumors came that the 
Tibetans were coming to sack the city, coming clothed 
in skin gowns, but would return in silk garments. 
Many people took their valuables and fled the city. 
Pekin ran over with excitement all at once, and sent 
several thousand men, with General Ma commanding, 
to fully subdue that corner of Tibet. He at once de- 
stroyed the lamasery, but the lamas, knowing that 
they were in for it, had fled before his arrival, taking 
their most valuable possessions with them. Now he 
revenged the death of Fong mightily. Several hun- 
dred men were beheaded. Many homes were left 
desolate. Heads fell so thick and fast there was no 
one to bury the bodies, and no one cared. Their 
friends were afraid to come and get them. The hun- 

27 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

gry dogs had feasted every day, even the Chinese sol- 
diers eating their dead enemies' hearts and livers. The 
heads of the chief men, when severed, were placed on 
trays and presented before Fong's coffin as an offering 
to him. 

In the city General Ma beheaded both of the 
Tibetan governors, though they had tried to prevent 
the killing of the commissioner. This is the Chinese 
custom, however. If a man can't govern his people 
he must pay the price, and it is usually his head. 

Two Catholic priests were killed before General 
Ma arrived, their buildings destroyed, and all their 
followers who would not retract were shot. The land 
and houses of all those who helped in the rebellion, 
or those supposed to have helped, were confiscated 
by the Chinese Government. The Catholics were 
afterwards given the second governor's house and 
grounds as part compensation for damage done to 
them, as well as a hundred and twenty thousand taels, 
which the French Government demanded besides. 

General Ma now left and General Joa took com- 
mand in 1906. He besieged the city of Shangchen 
for three or four months. Shangchen is seven days 
to the south of Batang. All the people had shut them- 
selves in the lamasery and could neither be dislodged 
nor starved out, but finally, after three or four months' 
siege, the source of the water supply was found cut 
off. Then they decided to open the doors and run, 
but as they left the building men, women, children, and 
lamas were hacked to pieces, some six hundred being 
slain. 

2% 



WHAT AND WHERE IS TIBET 

The big monastery, with its valuable books, paint- 
ings, and scrolls, fell into the hands of the Chinese. 
The brass and bronze idols were broken in pieces and 
carried to Chentu, the capital of Szechuan, on men's 
backs and by yak loads and coined into Chinese half 
cent copper pieces. The big painted idol of the 
Buddha was captured, and the general told the people 
they could have it for three thousand rupees, which 
was promptly paid. 

For this great victory General Joa was created im- 
perial commissioner for the defense of the western 
frontier of China. During these years, up to 191 1, he 
has been fighting and conquering city after city and 
tribe after tribe in this part of Tibet. Eighteen days 
beyond Batang, at Chamdo, he has placed a garrison 
of Chinese soldiers ; the telegraph line is being ex- 
tended toward Lassa. During the fall of 1910 the 
Chinese soldiers he had stationed at Shangchen, to 
the number of about two hundred, rebelled against the 
Chinese Government. Eighteen of them, their major, 
and two of the captains were recaptured, and General 
Joa meted out their punishment, which was a severe 
one. 

Many years ago what was called the border of Ti- 
bet was the top of a mountain-pass between Tachienlu 
and Yachow. Years later the border was moved again, 
as the Chinese crowded more and more into the west- 
ern part of the province. It was then placed at a little 
stone bridge just beyond Tachienlu. Some two hun- 
dred and fifty years more of fighting and conquest 
and trying to people the valleys with Chinese farmers, 

29 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

resulted in the line being placed just beyond Batang. 
The Tibetan population, however, extends westward 
to the old border. Though Tibet has been called a 
part of the Chinese Empire, it has been practically in- 
dependent. But after the English expedition under 
Colonel Younghusband to Lassa, in 1905, the Chinese 
awoke to the fact that something must be done. 

Russia, on the north, was jealously watching Eng- 
land, while England, on the south, was busy guessing 
what Russia meant to do; so they both stood off and 
gave China her opportunity. At present all cities of 
the least importance for strategic purposes are manned 
by a garrison of Chinese soldiers. The ruling officials 
everywhere are Chinese, so that now after the last 
year's fighting Tibet is practically all under Chinese 
control, while the Dalai lama has fled the country and 
his people, and is now a guest in India. 

In the summer of 191 1 General Joa was created 
viceroy of the Province of Szechuan, and with his 
conquering army has left Tibetan country for a resi- 
dence in the capital city, Chentu. 

The future history of the country, as well as the 
ease or hardship that the mission may have to endure, 
depends much on his successor. At present the land is 
leased for the hospital building and the way seems 
opening for a greater work. 



30 



CHAPTER III. 

How to Get to Tibet 

"Raise the stone and thou shalt find Me, 
Cleave the wood and there am I." 

"Going to Tibet," so said the letter, and the news 
fell as a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. "Why, the 
man is wild; he has just finished his medical course 
and must make a name for himself; he had better be 
buried alive than to go to that country." So thought 
all the friends of the young doctor and his wife when 
they had decided to go to this distant station. 

Leave-takings are not happy occasions, and it was 
not easy to leave fathers, mothers, brothers, and sis- 
ters. God seemed very far away and love for human- 
ity dwindled immensely after the first heroic part was 
over. The Rocky Mountains seemed very high and 
the city of San Francisco very far from everywhere, 
especially Kansas. Six days of sailing and the harbor 
of Honolulu came in view. Land looked very good 
and extremely solid after so much water. Leper Is- 
land was faintly visible in the distance. To this island 
are sent lepers from the United States, with a doctor 
to care for them and a superintendent to govern them ; 
and those who are able work a little, but the support 
is mainly from the government. 

3i 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

As the steamer came slowly up to the pier, out 
swam the Hawaiian lads in water from thirty to forty 
feet deep, clad only in breech-clout, diving and swim- 
ming like frogs, and yelling, "Drop a dollah right 
heah." As the passengers threw the dimes and nickels 
over to them they would catch them in their hands 
and mouths or dive to get them before they reached 
the bottom. 

The ship anchored for the night and everybody 
went on shore to feel something substantial under foot 
once more and get a view of the beautiful island so 
full of romance and tragedy. The next day, on leav- 
ing, all were garlanded with the bright red and yellow 
flowers in accordance with the old Hawaiian custom. 

Thirteen more days of ocean travel, the old ship 
finding her path through the trackless waters, and the 
harbor of Yokohama was reached. The busy, won- 
derful little Japan came into view, but it takes a whole 
book, a writer, and an artist to tell of that country. 
The travelers, homesick for something from home, 
bought what looked like a russet apple, but it turned 
out to be a pear that tasted more like a turnip than 
anything else, and also something that looked like 
chocolate creams, which proved to be dough of some 
kind. 

Though Japan was full of charm and beauty, the 
travelers must go on. There were a few more stops 
in the Japanese harbors and four days more were 
necessary before Shanghai could be reached. There a 
week was needed to purchase food and necessaries 
for the long Yangtse River journey. We boarded a 

3 2 




The houseboat in which we traveled down the Yangste on the 

way home. The captain's wife is on top of the boat, and the 

babies' heads in the window. 




The Foreign Christian Mission at Batang in a great bronze tea 

caldron found in the ruined lamasery. Taken a few months after 

arriving in the city. 



HOW TO GET TO TIBET 

small steamer which carried us to Nankin, where we 
stopped for a while and paid a most interesting visit 
to the great mission station located in that place, and 
met noble men and women who make it so, and whom 
it is an honor to know. 

A month or so could be well spent in study and 
packing and repacking for such a journey. Small 
steamers carry us past Wuhu, then to Hankow, where 
we all change to a smaller steamer and are carried to 
Ichang, a thousand miles inland. Traveling has been 
easy, so far as railway, steamships, and river boats 
have made it so; but now the real journey begins. 
And now good-bye to civilization, in a measure, for 
a Chinese wooden houseboat has to be hired, and one 
of these should be seen to be appreciated. It is a 
square-framed, heavily-built, five-room affair, pulled 
by bamboo cables up the river for seven hundred miles. 
The rooms are very small, and partitions thin. The 
captain and wife and children, if there are any, live 
in the back room ; the crew under matting in the front ; 
the cargo is placed beneath the floor. Food is cooked 
on a small charcoal stove, with a tin oil-can for an 
oven, or in the Chinese iron pan in the front of the 
boat. The beds are built in, or cots are used, and 
things made as convenient as possible for the four 
weeks to Chungking. 

The rooster is killed and blood sprinkled on the 
prow, paper cash is burned, little red candles are 
lighted, and the gods invoked for a safe journey. All 
goes well until there is a rapid to go through, then 
excitement runs riot, the water rushes and foams and 

3 33 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

roars, the coolies on the bank pull and struggle, with 
a taskmaster to lash them if they do n't work ; the 
ropes strain and crack, drums beat, and inch by inch 
up the river the boat crawls. 

The coolies tracking are more often the ones who 
get drowned, as the ropes occasionally break or throw 
them down the cliffs into the water. As the travelers 
watched, one poor fellow tumbled down the sandbank ; 
his shin was badly bruised, but he must keep up with 
the others. Sometimes the ropes break, and — whiz, 
bang, whirl — back you go; the boat turning round 
and round every way, with no one to control it. Some- 
times in one minute all that has been gained in half 
a day is lost; then, if a rock gets in the road there 
is apt to be a hole in the boat, and the cargo hung 
up to dry for a few days. So the days and weeks go 
by, rapid after rapid is climbed until the journey is 
over. 

Some way they find out that a foreign doctor is 
on the boat ; after the boat stops they call him to dress 
a man's face that has been badly cut by a fall on the 
rocks. Another poor fellow comes limping along, all 
the toes of one foot rotted off except the big one. He 
states that a rock had fallen on it eight years ago, 
and it had never been washed in all that time. An- 
other coolie came with an arm that had been smashed 
between two boats. It smelled very badly, as it was 
so infected ; but he could not stop to have it properly 
bandaged, as his boat was going on and he must keep 
up or lose his pittance of cash. 

Chinese gunboats are stationed all along the bank 

34 



HOW TO GET TO TIBET 

to capture the pirates who frequent the banks as well 
as the lonely ports along the river. 

One morning it sounded as if the boat was being 
hammered in and as if the crew were all fighting ; such 
stamping and talking and shouting we had never heard. 
It turned out that the cook had not fixed the food to 
suit one man, and all were taking a hand, pushing 
each other in the stomach, and pulling pigtails. 

Though one can get many kinds of Chinese prod- 
ucts to eat at the stopping-places, it is well to have 
on hand some good American food from Shanghai, 
as the native material does n't taste like home food, 
at least during the first year out. 

Chungking is reached and a stop of a few days 
made, some supplies purchased, and the journey re- 
sumed. Still three weeks more of the old Yangtse 
and the bamboo ropes that might break and don't, 
of the rocks you might have bumped into and did n't, 
and dry land is reached once more. 

Chungking is the last station, where the French, 
German, and English gunboats are anchored. At Kia- 
ting the river is left for good, and the overland jour- 
ney for twelve days to Tachienlu is begun. Oh, it 
was good to see the growing mustard and beans ! The 
air w r as heavy with the fragrance from the blossoming 
fields, and there was solid earth beneath the feet of the 
coolies w r ho carried our chairs, instead of the muddy, 
treacherous Yangtse water. The travelers realized 
they were not in any sense either aquatic birds, beasts, 
or fish, but of the earth earthy, with hearts that grew 
warm on the soil. Four days to Yachow, through 

35 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

fields and level stretches of sweet-scented flowers, 
though sometimes the scents got mixed and the flowers 
lost when we met a man carrying buckets of dis- 
solved filth from the pits of human refuse, which is 
used in fertilizing their gardens and fields. 

Every night a stop in inns, where everything was 
dirty and where it was impossible to find a clean spot 
anywhere. The surroundings consisted of foul beds 
made of boards with a piece of matting on top, a table, 
and square chair ; floors that had never been scrubbed 
since America was discovered and some time before; 
a water-closet under or near the room ; a barn or pig- 
sty fully occupied on the other side. But, riding all 
day we were hungry enough to eat anything and tired 
enough to sleep in spite of the eyes that peeped through 
the paper windows. 

Miles and miles through rice fields flooded or be- 
ing plowed, the roads are only narrow paths between 
the fields, where a tumble might prove disastrous or 
land the traveler knee-deep in the soft mud. Small 
mounds or hills terraced with as many as thirty or 
forty terraces to the top, every inch of ground being 
used. Thus four days to Yachow; from there to 
Tachienlu eight more days of chair travel were re- 
quired. So on we go up and down the mountains, in 
torrid valleys, and over snow-capped hills ; around cor- 
ners, where the chair hangs over space and the rider 
can only shut his eyes and trust to the straw-shod 
coolies that carry him. A fall, a slip, the breaking of 
a string — and down, down into a cloud-mist he would 
fall, and the alighting would not be easy. 

36 



HOW TO GET TO TIBET 

Mountains, mountains everywhere. Two high 
passes ; at least they seem high to Kansas people. At 
the foot are ferns, flowers, bamboo, and summer 
weather ; at the top snow and the wind blowing a hurri- 
cane. Tops were carried off the chairs, and the bearers 
were afraid to speak, for fear of arousing the wind- 
devil, who was supposed to lodge somewhere on that 
mountain. He did n't seem to need rousing, but acted 
as if he and all his family were awake. 

Over these two passes many men, women, and 
children go all the year, carrying heavy burdens of 
tea, salt, coal, and wood. It is a common occurrence 
on that road to pass a dead coolie by the side of the 
path, or even in the path, where they literally die in 
harness. 

Often and often it looked as if the path led right 
up against the side of a mountain, and there would 
be no way out and no way to go on. But there was al- 
ways a way out or through or over. The last few days 
before reaching Tachienlu the steep hillsides were all 
cultivated for the raising of corn. There was not in 
a decently flat position enough ground for a potato 
patch, and it was a mystery how the men and women 
climbed and stood to hoe the crop, with the land 
slanting at an angle of sixty degrees. 

Three days this side of Tachienlu, at Lutingchow, 
is a bridge made only of heavy chains stretched across 
the river, some three hundred feet in length and fifty 
feet above the water. A few loose boards are laid 
upon them for use in walking from one side of the 
river to the other, and all the traveler can do is to 

37 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

shut his eyes and go on — as the bridge has been known 
to give away and drown a number of coolies who were 
carrying their loads of two hundred and fifty or three 
hundred pounds of tea. 

But the city is finally reached, where a halt of a 
few days must be made to rest and take baths and 
get washing done. Food must be prepared, some 
more stores bought, "ula" must be asked of the Chi- 
nese official and the Tibetan king, and all got ready 
for the final trip over the twelve mountain passes to 
Batang. A week is needed at least, and more if the 
traveler is very tired. Finally the day arrives for the 
going, and after a few hours' wait it is announced 
that all is ready. The chairs for the women and chil- 
dren, the riding-horses for the men, the yak and mules 
for the loads, and away the caravan goes. It 's a 
gradual climb of a few hundred feet upward from 
Tachienlu to the first mud inn for the night. The 
country is no more Chinese, but entirely different, 
wilder, less populated, and the houses are of mud and 
stone, with flat dirt-roofs. It is time to stop for the 
night ; the beds in their skin-laced bags are taken off 
the yak, the food is also unloaded, and it is luck if 
one of the animals hasn't taken a run and dropped 
the boxes, and the jam has n't made a loving acquaint- 
ance with the tea, and the coffee and sugar mixed be- 
fore it is wanted. Wash-pans and combs are brought 
out, and all have a good wash and get ready for sup- 
per, which the Chinese cook is preparing in a big sheet- 
iron pan belonging to the inn or on your own small 
cast-iron stove, if you are lucky enough to have one. 

38 




The great chain bridge at Lutingchow, about 300 feet long and 
50 feet above the water. 



HOW TO GET TO TIBET 

A grand view of immense snow mountains is to be 
had from here ; in the meantime the cots are made up 
ready for the night, and after supper you are glad to 
roll in and sleep. Early next morning the Tibetans 
are awake, eating, and ready to start, and you must 
get up, for it is a long journey that day. Faces are 
washed, beds put in the skin-cases again, breakfast 
eaten, and the cavalcade is ready once more. The 
chair-coolies step along at a good pace, while the yak 
go slower, to graze a bit, as they have no food at all, 
only as they can gather it when they stop for that pur- 
pose or as they walk along. A halt is made at noon- 
time for rest and food, and in some mysterious way it 
is discovered that a doctor is one of the travelers. A 
man comes bowing to the earth, begging him to go 
a short distance to see his wife ; he goes, only to find 
that she is a leper, and he can do nothing. They have 
suspected as much, but hope the foreigner's medicine 
could cure even that. Then the woman cries and 
pleads that if he can not aid her, to give her husband 
and two babies something, so they can not take the 
dreaded disease. 

Two women come, of a little better class, and draw 
near a bit shyly and ask if he has medicine for a pain 
in their heart. They say it hurts so all the time in here 
(with their hands over their breasts), and they would 
like a relief from the pain. He asked what was the 
trouble, and one told him that her husband was dead, 
and the other that she was a widow, and her only 
son had just died with the smallpox. Oh! there is 



39 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

only one thing to ease such aches as that, and they 
don't know! 

On the travelers go again, and see something queer 
in little boxes hanging to the telegraph poles. Look- 
ing a little closer, it proves to be human heads ! A 
great warning to trespassers. Some one has been cut- 
ting the wires, and the Chinese official has cut off a 
few Tibetan heads and hung them up on the poles. 

Now the travelers are on the summit of a great 
grassy-topped mountain, and the caravan of yak have 
stopped to graze and the chairmen to rest a little. More 
than ten kinds of flowers they see and gather as they sit 
on the ground to eat their lunch away out in the lonely 
wilds. The world has never seemed quite so big be- 
fore, and they have never seemed so far away from 
everything as they sit in that vastness, surrounded 
miles away by glistening snow-ranges — and only the 
little group of four. How small they seem, and how 
great the immensity around them. By and by they 
come to a solitary hut away up there, and the women 
run inside at the sight of the foreigner and his camera. 
On inquiry it was found that a few soldiers were sta- 
tioned here to keep the bold robbers in subjection, 
though from all appearances they looked as if they 
might be the ones in subjection and kept in solitary 
confinement. 

Again it is night, and your travelers have stopped 
at a few low houses at the foot of a great pass, fifteen 
thousand feet above sea-level, which must be crossed 
on the morrow. It seems very difficult to sleep, and 
they all keep turning and turning, gasping for breath, 

40 







Some of the pines with their background of mountains seen on 
the road to Batang. Little Dorris and Dorothy on a fallen log. 



HOW TO GET TO TIBET 

and about three o'clock even the Tibetans are getting 
up and getting ready to go on ; they have had a hard 
night too. It finally dawns upon the travelers that it 
is the altitude that has produced the sleeplessness and 
the flopping and gasping so much like a fish out of 
water, so that hereafter greater sympathy for a fish 
will always be felt. It is the highest sleeping-place on 
the road. 

Onward and onward they go over the bare and 
lonesome pass that is lonesomeness personified, down 
into a beautiful valley with a cluster of houses, flocks, 
and herds. Next day the road is through great pine 
forests, where you think of Robin Hood and his merry 
men, and your heart jumps into your throat whenever 
you hear a rustle in the forest by your side or meet 
something that suddenly appears in front of you, for 
you are afraid it might be some of those fierce, wild- 
looking robbers, and you wonder if you 'd scream or 
try to swallow your rings; or if you would be brave, 
and if the man behind you with the rifle would shoot, 
and if he did, would he kill the robber or would he get 
away and nobody get hurt? 

So on they go past the great lamasery at Litang, 
with its hundreds of lamas, its great golden roof, and 
its sacred book of one hundred and eight volumes, 
which is printed there ; where it is so high there is no 
timber, and only dried cow-dung is used for fuel, and 
the principal food of the people is raw yak and sheep- 
meat. 

Then one night in a tiny village the caravan stops 
and finds a grave that is not Chinese, neither is it 

41 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

Tibetan, for around their homes you see no burial 
places. They burn the body, or they feed it to the 
birds, or throw it into the river. This is a mission- 
ary's grave, and over his resting-place rises the great 
snow-capped king of all the mountains between Ta- 
chienlu and Batang — a fitting monument for a hero 
such as he. Alone with one companion, he fell ill 
of typhus, and died there, and his grave has been the 
farthest missionary outpost until the resting-place of 
our own Dr. Loftis and baby James Ogden mark one 
more step in the conquering army. Very slowly the 
advance moves ; yes, between the two stations a three 
days' journey and ten years' time. 

On they go for eighteen days, over mountains, 
through valleys, until it is the last day. Now shut 
your eyes, for when you come around that mountain 
you will see Batang. Open them and look at the little 
cluster of bright-yellow mud-houses. See the barley 
and wheat being harvested, and women carrying great 
loads of it in on their backs, chanting as they go, or 
on the flat roof beating it out with flails and .singing, 
"Om mani, Om mani, padme Ora, padme Ora," a vari- 
ation of the sacred phrase, "Om mani padme hum." 

Batang has been reached. What comes next? 



42 



CHAPTER IV. 

Tibetans Without Medical Science 

"Strength for to-day is all we need, 
For there never will be a to-morrow; 
For to-morrow will prove but another to-day 
With its measure of joy and sorrow." 

Perhaps there is no nation on the globe knowing 
so much of the construction of the human body as 
the Tibetans, and who have so little medical knowl- 
edge or so few remedies. The facts about anatomy- 
are learned from one of their modes of burial, the 
body being dissected and fed to the birds. Butter is 
the universal medicine ; it is used as a salve for ani- 
mals as well as men, for sickness and broken bones. 
Illness of all kinds is believed to be the work of devils, 
or demons, and to exorcise them it is necessary to have 
a holy man, so at the first symptom of approaching 
sickness those who can afford it send for a lama to 
read prayers over them. 

A firm belief in the fact that his enemy can pray 
him to death is inherent in every Tibetan, and often 
all a man has to do who has a grudge against another 
is to send his enemy word that he is praying daily for 
his special guardian idol to kill him; and this fact, 
coupled with the fear of the idol, usually accomplishes 
his purpose. 

43 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

A big, strong man, a teacher in the mission, got ill. 
He seemed to have an attack of pleurisy and got well 
of that, but still got thinner and thinner, and seemed 
to have no ambition or willingness to want to live. 
Dr. Shelton could n't find out what was the matter 
with him or that anything was the matter with him, 
physically. Finally, one day he asked him what in the 
world was the matter with him, anyway; why he 
did n't go out to the hot springs and take a bath, and 
go about his business. He shook his head and said: 
"It 's no use ; I 'm going to die. You know that enemy 
of mine who is angry with me because the Chinese 
official made him return the mule his people had 
stolen ? Well, he sent me word he was praying every 
day to his idol to kill me, and I can't get well." Dr. 
Shelton laughed at him and asked him if he didn't 
know better than that, and that such a thing was an 
utter impossibility, until the man grew ashamed and 
tried a bit, and was soon on the high road to recovery. 
But as he and all his house had no doubt as to what 
the result would be, it was quite possible to bring about 
the wish of his enemy. 

Another old teacher, whose son-in-law had gone 
to Germany with Dr. Tafel, received word that his 
daughter's husband was expecting to marry a German 
girl and never return again to Tibet or send any more 
money to his wife or her father. The old man was 
furious and said, with clenched teeth: "You tell him 
that I '11 kill him. I '11 pray every day to my idol to 
make him die. I can do it, and he knows I can." 

The medicine most resorted to seems to be pills 

44 




A Tibetan teacher in the mission and the man who thought he 
had to die, as his enemy was. praying him to death. 



TIBETANS WITHOUT MEDICAL SCIENCE 

made of the prayer, "Omi mani padrne hum/' written 
on tiny pieces of paper and rolled up to be swallowed. 
They also use pills made from a holy man's urine 
mixed with clay. Otherwise, sprinkling with holy 
water by the lamas, reading of prayers day and night 
from their sacred books, the banging of cymbals, ring- 
ing of bells and beating of drums for driving the devils 
out of the person, are the most common methods of 
doctoring. The noise itself would almost kill a well 
man, let alone cure a sick one. 

Perhaps a few little incidents that occur almost 
every day, and only the ones the missionary finds out 
— and they are not all, by any means — will help you to 
see the need of a mission placed just here. 

A little girl of thirteen was on the mountain watch- 
ing the cows. The robbers came, and she refused to 
run away, so they gave her leg a gash with a sword. 
Her people found her and, to stop the bleeding, plas- 
tered the cut full of cow-dung. She was brought to 
the dispensary. If she had been brought in the first 
place the healing would have been a simple matter, 
with clean washing and bandages; but it was quite 
another question to cleanse the wound now and heal 
it without inflammation. 

On one of the little mountain trips the men were 
called in to see an old woman of seventy years. They 
found her in a barn, sitting in the filth of ages which 
just can not be described. She had been upon the 
mountain after wood, and had fallen and broken her 
thigh. The leg lay at an angle of thirty degrees, the 
bone sticking entirely out through the flesh. As it had 

45 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

been done several days, it was horribly swollen, and 
the smell frightful. It was impossible to effect a 
cure; they could only wash and cleanse it and leave 
a bit of salve for alleviating pain, and go on. Only 
an old woman, yes; but her capacity for suffering is 
not less than yours or mine. 

One morning about ten o'clock a man came to the 
dispensary saying his two-year-old baby had fallen 
into the fire the evening before and his limbs were 
burned badly, and would the doctor go; the child was 
hurt so they could not carry him on their backs down 
the mountain. Medicine and bandages and necessary 
instruments were thrown into saddle-bags, some food 
gotten together quickly, a bed strapped behind the sad- 
dle, and the men were off up the steep mountain to 
remain the night and alleviate that tiny baby's suffer- 
ing. It had been burned now almost twenty-four 
hours, with no help at all, and nothing whatever to 
help ease the pain, and even a little burn hurts so badly. 
They found the baby burned down the front of both 
little legs and a bit across the abdomen. He was soon 
well enough to be carried down the mountain to the 
dispensary to have the burns dressed. 

One morning a lama, called a living Buddha, came 
and asked the foreign doctor to ride to a village a day's 
journey away, over a nearby mountain, where a mud- 
house had fallen down and some people were hurt. 
No white man or Chinese had been in that wild place 
before, and going seemed hazardous. They asked that 
only one foreigner come, and perforce the doctor was 
the one to go. A native evangelist, two soldiers, and 

46 



TIBETANS WITHOUT MEDICAL SCIENCE 

the lama made the rest of the crowd ; and when they 
came to the first village they stopped for breakfast. 
At first the people were frightened nearly out of their 
wits, but when they found nothing was going to harm 
them they brought the best they had for the travelers ; 
butter, tea, tsamba, and a kind of sour milk-cheese was 
set before them. Poor as these people were, they gave 
the big lama a catta (a scarf of loosely- woven silk) 
and three rupees for his blessing. Soon they were in 
the saddle and traveling onward again, and arrived 
about five o'clock at the village. They found six had 
been killed and three hurt by the falling of the heavy 
mud-walls. When Dr. Shelton started to see the man 
who was hurt so badly, they would n't allow him to 
be seen, but made excuses of all kinds and were afraid, 
even after sending a day's journey for help. The for- 
eign doctor turned away and said, all right ; he did n't 
want to visit anybody unless he was wanted. Then 
they begged him to wait until the next day. He agreed 
and went to the shed on top of the house to sleep, and 
was awakened by the mud and water falling on the 
bed, as it was raining. The big lama was awakened 
too, and the two began talking. He asked Dr. Shelton 
why he did such things for people and got no money 
for it, and why he left America, and what he wanted 
to come to their country for, anyway. 

That was the opportunity, and he was told why 
and for what reason and for whose sake, and how 
it was made possible by the followers of the Nazarene 
at home, who for His dear sake gave that the Tibetans 



47 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

might know. The lama listened and said, "That is 
just like our religion, only we don't do it." 

The next morning in a thick fog they came for the 
foreigner to see the man. He found him lying on 
a pile of dirty, filthy sheepskins, both legs and arms 
broken. They had been broken for eight days before 
his coming. An effort had been made to set the bones 
by putting on very small splints and wrapping them 
as tightly as could be, pulled around and around with 
a narrow rawhide string of yakhide, with some of the 
hair still clinging to it. Some of the bones had been 
replaced fairly well, and one arm was tied to the ceil- 
ing. All were compound fractures. Chloroform was 
given and the wrappings removed. The swelling was 
fearful, and the pus flew in every direction. The 
stench was dreadful. After the man had recovered 
from the effects of the chloroform he said he felt 
better. Then Dr. Shelton asked why he would not 
see him as soon as he arrived. "Oh," he said, "they 
had heard that foreigners slit the flesh with knives 
and rubbed the medicine into the cut." Then they 
also believed that a stranger coming off the road is 
covered with devils, and if he came at once into the 
presence of a sick person they would all pounce upon 
him and kill him. 

The next morning the hands and feet were better 
and the swelling had gone down some, but the poor 
fellow was covered with lice and had rheumatism, and 
there was little hope that he could recover. But they 
asked the foreign man to come again, who replied he 
would return whenever he was wanted; but in three 

4 8 



o ^ 

H 

9 *+ 

^ o P 
p ST" 

|3 1" 
B-g. 

P a* 
a> £ 

c-t- <"-t- 

O) to 
D O 




Q 

o 




TIBETANS WITHOUT MEDICAL SCIENCE 

or four days a messenger came, saying the man was 
dead and returning the medicine that had not been 
used. 

Perhaps for pure, concentrated suffering the fol- 
lowing incident will suffice. 

There was a Tibetan woman who brought milk to 
the mission every day. True, it had a layer of dirt 
in the bottom and was never guilty of any cream on 
top, and had always to be boiled. Perhaps it was 
diluted with water and bean curd, and was a mixture 
of goat and yak milk. It was rather white; but it 
was called cream and used as such. For two morn- 
ings the woman failed to come. About noon of the 
second day her sister came and said her house had 
fallen down and they had all been burned. The place 
was two or three miles distant, so we took a sedan- 
chair for the baby and me, while Mr. Sanders, Mr. 
Ogden, and Dr. Shelton walked, carrying their guns, 
thinking to shoot a pheasant for supper. It was a 
beautiful day and quite a rest to get away from the 
filth and stench of the city. When we came near the 
house the chair was put down, and we all walked up 
the mountain a little way to where the people lived. 
It is impossible to find words to picture the awful 
misery and suffering that we saw. The house was 
built on the hillside, of stone with mud mortar. The 
floor was made of round poles about the size of a man's 
arm, laid on some kind of crosspieces. On these poles 
a few skins were laid, and this was their bed, for they 
slept on that corduroy floor. In one corner was a 
pile of dirt and three or four stones, and on these had 

4 49 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

been placed a big, flat, iron pan of boiling water. 
Some way the floor had fallen in, taking all of them 
with it, as well as the hot water. The goats and yak 
were kept in the basement of the building. Filth had 
accumulated for years, for the idea of cleaning a barn 
had not yet occurred to these Tibetans. For forty- 
eight hours those burned people had been sitting on 
the ground in agony which can not be told. They had 
no relief whatever; no vaseline, no oil, not even a 
clean rag with which to bind the burns. Beside the 
woman on the ground was the iron pan with water 
and cornmeal, and some kind of a green vegetable 
stirred in it. This was all the food they had. Mrs. 
Ogden had sent some bread and meat, which we laid 
down by them, and Dr. Shelton began to look at their 
burns. A boy of ten was burned from the knee half 
way to the thigh, the great blisters standing out on his 
legs. A little boy of seven or eight had escaped en- 
tirely ; the baby, a little girl of four, had been burned 
to death. The poor mother cried and said how pretty 
she was. The man was able to walk, but his leg was 
badly burned, and he had a great gash in his head. 
The woman was burned from below the knee to her 
thigh. There were great blisters as big as the palm 
of her hand on her leg, and the flesh seemed almost 
ready to drop off. She sat on the ground moaning 
and almost helpless. The men forgot their guns and 
began to work. The little boy was frightened when 
the doctor took his instruments to open the blisters, 
being very much afraid of the glistening lances. As 
the doctor had taken only a small box of vaseline, he 

50 



TIBETANS WITHOUT MEDICAL SCIENCE 

could do nothing for the boy or the woman there. So 
the woman was carried and put in the chair and sent 
on to the dispensary, while Mr. Sanders, the baby, and 
I started to walk home. Mr. Ogden with a few dried 
leaves and stems had made a fire and got some hot 
water. There was just enough vaseline and bandages 
to dress the man's leg and head, and he and the little 
unburned boy were left. But how to get the other 
boy to town was a question. He could not be carried 
on any one's back, so Mr. Ogden and Dr. Shelton made 
a stretcher of sheepskins and two poles, set him upon 
that and, one in front and one behind, they carried him 
in. These poor people were taken care of, fed, and 
treated until they were able to take care of themselves. 

One day a woman came to the dispensary saying 
her stomach was full of pus, and that a Tibetan had 
made a hole in it with an iron rod to let it out. She 
had the hole over the stomach, and the odor was 
frightful. It had been done about one month, but 
when she was told a knife or probe must be used to 
see where the opening went, and how deep it was, 
she refused to have it done, left the dispensary, and 
invited a lot of lamas to read prayers for her. 

A little child of ten or eleven years who had been 
begging on the streets for some days was found lying 
on the stones and in a dying condition. Dozens of 
men and women passing and repassing never seeming 
to even pity, let alone aid. The child was taken to the 
dispensary, cleaned, and fed, but died that night. Next 
day it was buried by the mission. 

"Unto one of these little ones." 

Si 



CHAPTER V. 
The Entering Wedge— Medicine 

"The clouds are broken in the sky, 

And through the mountain walls 
A rolling organ harmony 

Swells up and shakes and falls. 
Then move the trees, the copses nod, 

Wings flutter, voices hover clear, 
O just and faithful knight of God, 

Ride on, the prize is near! 
So pass I hostel, hall, and grange, 

By bridge and pond, by park and pale; 
All armed I ride, whate'er betide, 

Until I find the Holy Grail." 

To understand how people can be born, live, suf- 
fer and die with no medical help to ease pain is quite 
a difficult thing for one in such a country as this, where 
the ground is kept clean, the water is looked after, 
the food carefully examined, teeth cared for, and all 
pain stopped as soon as may be with the latest scientific 
methods and the keenest brains to use them. 

Will you try to imagine a land and people where 
these things are all lacking, just for the sake of this 
little chapter? The Chinese have many drugs which 
they use in a somewhat skillful way, and many physi- 
cians with a sort of medical skill, who demand high 

52 . 



THE ENTERING WEDGE— MEDICINE 

prices for their services, very few doing charity work 
among the poor. And heretofore the Chinese have 
always had the solace of opium in severe pain. The 
Tibetans have no medical science at all, and only a 
blind trust in their holy men to help them in all and 
through all ills. 

There is no nation perhaps so full of religion as 
Tibet. It is everywhere : strung on prayer flags, across 
and across the mountains from tree to tree, on top of 
the passes, on long poles, in great skin cylinders turned 
by water-power, in metal prayer-wheels whirled in 
the hand, or carved on miles and miles of .stones along 
the roads. Religion is everywhere, on everything, in 
everything. It is in the people as they make their 
holy pilgrimage to Lassa and home again; coming 
from Lassa and back again ; as they wall themselves 
in stone huts, away from the sunlight, for years and 
years to meditate and pray; going over snow moun- 
tains, through valleys, in cold and in heat on their 
stomachs to the holy city, taking years to accomplish 
their pilgrimage, to be holy men in the end. The land 
is full of lamas, hundreds, thousands of them ; praying 
always, but leading obscene lives; religion surfeited. 

It is a religion of self, for self, enduring pain and 
hardship, solitary confinement, muttering millions of 
prayers for the exaltation of self, while those who 
must serve these holy ones live in hopeless poverty. 
These priests pitilessly demand money and food when 
they must have help. It is a religion of husks. Ours 
is, too, sometimes — is n't it ? — when we forget the com- 
passionate heart of the great Master and dream of 

53 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

self and rest self-satisfied in our own goodness as we 
compare ourselves to our fellows. 

But look once, just once, at Him when He was 
tired, weary, dust-stained, and with a heart aching over 
a world that would not see, and stand one moment be- 
fore the bar of self and with bowed head and humbled 
heart ask if we are many times less selfish or more 
compassionate than these "holy" priests of Tibet. 
Aye, it only needs one clear look at Him and the com- 
parison of your own heart with His, and you will 
awake and give to Tibet the Master. But many of 
you have seen the vision and have sent the servants 
who are trying to serve in His name as you, too, also 
serve. But religion can not be thrust upon a Tibetan. 
If he thought that was what was happening when 
he comes for medicine and sympathy he would 
certainly turn and have some very important affairs 
to see to at once. The Chinese are reached more 
easily, perhaps, than the Tibetans ; at least they usually 
come first for medicine. 

Some one is pounding on the mission gate, is in a 
desperate hurry and wants help at once. Two men 
have had a quarrel and the one worsted has rushed 
home and taken a drink of opium mixed with wine and 
flies back to die on his enemy's doorstep. In despair, 
as he believes if the man dies on his step the soul will 
return to haunt him, besides his having to pay the 
funeral expenses, he runs to the foreign doctor for 
help. The missionary goes, but has only used a small 
hypodermic syringe, or "water-gun," while the patient 
is being held, and the man desperately cries, "Is that 

54 



THE ENTERING WEDGE— MEDICINE 

all you are going to do ?" "Wait and see/' is the an- 
swer, and soon that is n't all that is being done by any 
means. The man quickly recovers and the foreigner 
has gained his first victory and his reputation is 
started. 

Another day a poor fellow who has been a soldier 
comes crawling into the dispensary over the moun- 
tains from Batang, both legs frozen to just below the 
knee, the flesh dropping from the bones, and he asks 
this foreign man to "make the flesh to grow on again/' 
He is taken and fed and told that such a thing is im- 
possible, but that both limbs can be taken off and 
wooden ones made for him. Because of the super- 
stitious belief that the foreigners eat the livers and 
eyes of their patients, and the fact that little children 
are frightened by being told of the horrible things that 
might be done to them, the operation is performed 
where all may see. The fellow is put under chloro- 
form as the people stand around, and as the knife slices 
through the flesh the man does not move. The saw 
cuts through the bone, the man lies perfectly still, while 
the onlookers are shivering and groaning, some of 
them are turning sick — and the work is done. The 
patient wakes and has felt no pain. "Yes, I under- 
stand all about it," one Chinaman says; "the doctor 
just put some medicine on a rag and held it over the 
man's face and he went to sleep, then sawed fcs k*g 
off, and when he got through just tickled him r'n the 
ribs a little and woke him up, and that 's all there 
was to it." 

Through such things as these the power of foreign 

55 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

medicine was growing and the people were hearing 
about it everywhere, until they believed the blind could 
be made to see and even the leper healed. And one 
day the leper came, a stonemason, and falling on his 
face asked to be cured. It was very hard to tell him 
it could n't be done, when he said he would give all the 
money he had made except just a few cents to live on 
if he might be healed. To him it seemed a much 
smaller cure than what had been done to others, and 
he believed it was only because he did n't have money 
enough to pay for the medicine, and not because it 
could n't be done that he was refused. 

Perhaps the first thing of any importance that 
brought a knowledge of the use of foreign medicine to 
the Tibetans was the slight operation on the hand of 
a big lama belonging to one of the lamaseries in 
Tachienlu. The big fellow and two or three of his 
followers came one morning to the house, saying he 
had thrust a needle into his hand and broken it off in 
the fleshy part just below the thumb and could n't get 
it out. He was told that the flesh would have to be 
cut and small tweezers used to draw the broken piece 
out. "Yes, but it will hurt," the big fat lama objected. 
"No," the doctor said, "it will not. I'll put some med- 
icine on with this needle and that will hurt a little, 
but you can stand that, can't you?" He thought he 
could, so the hand was deadened with cocaine, the 
knife thrust in and the needle quickly extracted. 
While the lama's eyes grew bigger and bigger and 
those standing around groaned and asked if it did n't 
hurt, he said, "No, it did n't, but just look at the blood." 

56 



THE ENTERING WEDGE— MEDICINE 

This simple operation drove another small missionary 
wedge into this land in the shape of a needle. 

A thousand miles for a doctor, wouldn't that be 
an awful distance to go for help in America, es- 
pecially if you had a right hard pain? 

One morning a man came into the little courtyard 
in Tachienlu asking for medicine or the use of a knife 
for his master, who was with him and who* was ill. 
He was invited to bring his master and come to the 
house. Upon examination it was found that there 
were some scrofulous glands that needed the surgeon's 
knife. But the instruments were gone, Johnny had 
taken the boxes of drugs and instruments and gone 
on ahead of the missionaries to Batang. The opera- 
tion was impossible, and the man had come one month's 
journey from the south for help. What was to be 
done ? The man decided for himself to follow the mis- 
sionary for eighteen days more on to Batang to have 
those glands removed. 

A few days after reaching Batang the man was 
there, too, and wanted his work done. The chloroform 
and necessary instruments and medicines were un- 
packed, a door taken down and used as a table was 
placed in the upstairs courtyard. The man was placed 
upon it where every one could see, so they would 
know that the foreigner had no secret magical power, 
no dreadful medicine to conjure with or devils to aid 
him, and the operation was done. Then twenty-five 
days to his home the man had still to go, but he re- 
turned happy. This was the first operation in Batang 
and the entering wedge has grown a bit larger. 

57 



CHAPTER VI. 

Itinerating on the Roof of the World. 

"Lo, it is I, be not afraid; 
In many climes, without avail, 
Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail; 
Behold it is here — this cup which thou 
Didst fill at the streamlet for Me but now; 
This crust is My bo'dy, broken for thee, 
This water His blood that died on the tree; 
The Holy Supper is kept indeed 
In whatso we share with another's need; 
Not what we give, but what we share — 
For the gift without the giver is bare; 
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me." 

What 's happening at the missionary homes this 
morning ? Here goes a man leading three or four yak 
with their wooden saddles on ready for loads. Here 
is another man with two or three horses with Chinese 
saddles for riding. Here go two soldiers who are 
to accompany them, and the Chinese official representa- 
tive, to see that things go off properly, and that they 
receive the money for the use of the Tibetan's cattle 
and horses. The doctor and the missionary evangelist 
are going on an itinerating trip of a week or two. The 
loads are paired off two and two, as two of the bundles 
or boxes go on one animal. There is no choice, as they 

58 



ITINERATING ON ROOF OF THE WORLD 

are made as nearly equal in weight as possible ; if they 
are not, a stone is added to the lighter side to make it 
even. 

Things are about ready, the Tibetans pack up the 
skin bags of bedding and extra clothing, the box of 
provisions, the little stove. The yak are loaded and 
started. Now the foreigners are coming, the rifles 
strapped to the saddles, revolvers belted on, oil skins 
strapped behind saddles, ready for a sudden mountain 
storm, and a last good-bye is waved to the wives and 
babies and they are off. They travel on steadily until 
noon, when a stop for rest and dinner is made in a 
small village. But what's the matter? Is there no- 
body at home, with the houses all locked and every- 
thing silent ? But look a bit closer ; there 's somebody 
on top of the house. 

The men go on about their business, the little camp- 
fire is lighted, and the medicine box opened up by the 
roadside. Soon here come one or two of the braver 
ones out of curiosity. As they come near they are 
greeted in their own language, which is a bit of a sur- 
prise, and they begin talking and wondering over the 
queer things they see. They come still closer to see the 
strange foreigners eat, are offered a bite of foreign 
cheese, but say it is n't fit to eat. They listen to a 
watch, but are afraid to hear it tick, not knowing at 
all what it is. 

Perhaps a few patients come, but the horses are 
soon saddled and they are off again, going up the 
mountain. It gets colder and colder, overcoats are 
put on, and the oil skins as well, as it is hailing. A 

59 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

little higher and snow covers the ground for several 
inches ; and then down into a valley, which gets warmer 
and warmer, and soon it is summer again. Flowers 
are everywhere and heavy coats are shed, and it is 
pleasant once more. 

Sometimes they stop in a deserted or ruined lama- 
sery, which is the result of the war between the Tibet- 
ans and Chinese, and sleep surrounded by paintings 
of the Buddhist hell, and lords of the east, west, north, 
and south heavens, and an image of the thousand- 
handed Chenrezik, with an eye in the center of each 
hand. The people remind them often of the Amer- 
ican Indians, living in huts, the children running 
naked into the grass and trees to hide when they see 
the men. Even the grown people run and bar the 
doors and hide, or if they have n't time to get in the 
house they make for a gully or ditch. 

The medicine box is opened, and soon one or two 
are coming, and then the people come in bigger crowds, 
and foreign medicine along with the Gospel in Tibetan 
is being given at the feet of "Chenrezik," much to that 
old god's surprise and disgust, no doubt. 

So on they go every day for a week, for two weeks, 
and even four. For one whole week the two men ask 
only grass for the horses as their compensation, and 
got two eggs besides. 

On one long, long trip, which was made possible 
by Dr. Loftis coming, some six hundred patients were 
given medicine, and many friends made and invitations 
given for them to visit the homes in Batang, but the 
food gave out and they had to eat tsamba and butter 

60 













"i-' : " - >'- , ..' i >i^.v^ ■"'-»■, -I'': ;"". 


■ r Z'"" -$.;■-■>%•*. ■■ ■■■;■: 




. 


*Wfl£ 






j—m 


l| «P* 






* \ i 








] 


^^l 




..'V- . •-,;- - ' . ■;> 


: 


j^S^ 




.,.,:: > 








ak^Jr-^*:k«. .^ - "-" -'^i , -c^ v ,.,4^>-/'"* 



Dr Shelton going down the Yangtse in a coracle. 




The musk-deer hair cushions used in place of chairs by the 

Tibetans strapped to the donkey. The iron pans and tea churn. 

About ready to go out and have a good time. 



ITINERATING ON ROOF OF THE WORLD 

tea, and were glad to reach home and get clean once 
more. 

But they have stopped for another day in the great 
salt city of Yen Gin, where salt has been procured for 
two thousand years. This salt is carried up out of 
shallow, narrow salt-water wells by barefooted women, 
up notched logs and poured on the flat top of the 
houses to dry. There is no machinery whatever, only 
the sun and wind to aid them. 

The first medical case is a woman who wants a 
keloid removed from her ear. Cocaine is used, and as 
it is cut out the groans and sighs are most audible, 
though she assures the onlookers that it doesn't hurt 
at all, which they do n't believe and tell her she is lying 
or possessed of a devil. 

Amid the increased excitement a man comes 
dragging his son with a harelip. It is cocained and 
fastened, while the room fills with natives to see what 
is being done. They crowd so closely, the doctor can 
hardly use his arms. 

Medicine is given out right and left, while hot shots 
of Gospel are put in between doses of calomel and 
santonine. 

But a trip down the Yangtse is necessary this day, 
and there 's only one way to go. This is in a coracle, 
and in it they get and away they are whirled. A 
coracle is a boat of yak-skin sewed over a bamboo 
framework, with only a piece of squashy wet skin be- 
tween the passengers and the fish of the Yangtse. 

But the journey is made in safety, the four pas- 
sengers and their gods are unloaded, and the Tibetan 

61 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

boatman puts the little light shell on his head and walks 
back upstream along the banks to the starting place to 
wait for another traveler. 

It is evening again and the little group have 
stopped for the night, the landlady and her daughter 
have sore eyes. They are given some boric acid to be 
dissolved in boiling water and used to wash the eyes, 
then some yellow oxide of mercury salve to be rubbed 
on after they were clean. The men go to bed, but are 
roused by a man coming in, saying the medicine will 
not stick on. They have poured boiling water over 
the salve, too! 

Again they start on another day's travel, and as 
they halt at one place they find a man who has been 
severely hooked by a yak, the horn striking just above 
the eyebrow and entering the eye-socket, almost goug- 
ing out the eye. It is frightfully swelled and very 
painful; it is dressed, and it is found the next morn- 
ing that the eye is not injured, and the people are ex- 
ceedingly grateful for the kindness. 

In another home a poor old woman has not pleased 
some of the soldiers quartered in her house, and as a 
result her eye has been gouged out and is still very 
painful. A man there has also displeased the troops, 
and has been beaten until the flesh has fallen from the 
bones and the places refused to heal, and they came 
asking medicine for him. 

It is not simply Tibetans that sufifer from these 
bamboo spankings, but the Chinese officials punish 
their own soldiers, so that the flesh often drops from 
the leg and you might lay three fingers into the gash, 

62 



ITINERATING ON ROOF OF THE WORLD 

(Dr. Hardy has just written that a soldier had been 
spanked so severely that he had taken one and one- 
third pounds of meat, by actual weight, from the 
back of one of his thighs.) 

It is now the city of Janka they have reached, the 
first city over the border. As the city is very small, 
and the houses all are huts and all full, a garrison of 
Chinese being stationed there, it is difficult to find 
any place at all to stay. Finally a small room is found 
in which the cots are placed. The medicine box is 
taken into the street. Some of the soldiers here have 
been in Batang and are soon asking for medicine. 
After a few fingers and toes have been taken off and 
a boil or two opened for the soldiers, the Tibetans lose 
their fear and begin to come. The oil skins have to 
be spread on the beds to keep the dirt off, as it keeps 
falling from the ceiling, for the people, who are still 
afraid, are crowding to the top of the house to see what 
is being done. 

Busy all day, and next morning again they start 
for home, and come in the evening to the stone which 
marks the boundary between Tibet and China, where 
no foreigner has ever before been allowed to pass, the 
Tibetans guarding the place with loaded guns. 

One day down the road they meet a caravan of 
Tibetan gypsies, men, women, and children, with 
donkeys loaded with tsamba, as it is harvest time and 
they have begged a lot of grain. They all crowd 
around the big lama, who is along this time, begging 
him to bless them, offering to him gifts of cheese, 
butter, and tsamba for this. Many offer a string for 

63 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

him to tie a knot in and blow his breath on it. This 
is then tied on the neck or the arm, and as he is a holy 
man his breath protects against the devils. 

Later a man comes bringing a bundle of barley 
and asking the lama to cast lots and see what is the 
matter with his cattle. He says nothing has been the 
matter with the cattle until his father's death, and now 
about twelve of them have died. So the lama throws 
his dice three times and renders his decision thus : His 
father had been a very lucky man and nothing could 
or would touch his things, but now that he is dead the 
devils may come and do all the damage they wish. He 
tells the man to get three of their sacred books and 
have lamas read them through for him, and that will 
send the demons away. 

Afterwards Dr. Shelton speaks to the lama : "Your 
explanation about the cattle was very good; but how 
about those books; will they do that for him?" The 
lama replies that he does not know, but it would n't 
do to tell anybody that fact, as they would soon lose 
their authority if the people discovered they did n't 
know these things. 

But perhaps you would like to see them in the 
evening around the camp-fire, when all work is done 
and it is recreation time. Three stones are placed to- 
gether and a fire of "brush or dried argols made, if the 
altitude is too high for timber. If it does n't burn 
bright enough to boil the tea in the brass kettle, a goat- 
skin bellows is used. This is made of an entire skin 
with a metal tube fastened in at the neck, and it takes 
a master hand to make it blow. 

6 4 









i .* V ' ■'• : IM 




! 




^ 




<•* ■ ' 







The black tent of yak-hair in which the nomads live. 




A group of robbers, whose district has been among the last to 
yield to General Joa, but are now subject to Chinese rule. 



ITINERATING ON ROOF OF THE WORLD 

Now is the time for preaching, but it must be 
warily done. After years of study and hard hunting 
some of their folk-lore stories are found, and the 
teacher tells one of these. When they hear one with 
which perhaps they are familiar it makes some one 
think of one he can tell ; and so it goes around the 
group. When there is a lull the teacher says, "I '11 
tell one now ; and it 's all true, every word of it ;" and 
as simply as it can be told, a bit of a miracle or a 
glimpse of the Christ-life as He forgave His enemies 
is told ; and wonderful it seems to them, as a Tibetan 
never forgives. In these stories they are being told 
there is a Jesus, and why the teacher came to tell them 
about Him, and how he came. Other tales follow, 
and three Gospel stories, perhaps, get told in one even- 
ing, but not as a new religion. Oh, no; that would 
prove disastrous at first, and the teacher would be 
left alone to tell his tales to the night, and his oppor- 
tunity would be lost. 

As you imagine yourself there by the fire listening 
in the darkness, under the stars and in the mystery of. 
the night, as it comes on those great mountains, would 
you like a black tent story? The black tent of yak- 
hair stands at a little distance from the fire, and very 
soon all go to sleep under it and the world is alone. 
Then listen to the story, as these stories are not printed 
or written, but handed down from father and son. Can 
you see the big, shaggy fellow in his dirty gown, the 
color of the rocks and mountains, his twisted braid of 
hair covered with ivory, and silver rings coiled around 
5 65 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

his head, sitting cross-legged by the fire telling it in 
his strange tongue? 

The Ingratitude of Man. 

Once upon a time there was a lonesome road that 
passed along above a deep chasm. It was a very 
dangerous road to travel, and one night after a heavy 
rain it caved in, taking down into the ravine a man, 
a crow, a rat, and a snake who were traveling along 
there at the time. They sat on the ground wondering 
how they were ever going to get out. They thought 
they would have to starve to death there, when a trav- 
eler came along and, looking down, saw them. They 
all, at one time, began to beg and plead to be helped 
out ; so he threw a long rope down to them, and one 
after another pulled them all out. They all expressed 
great gratitude, and said they would never forget him 
and what he had done for them. 

The traveler in his heart thought that the man 
might be his friend sometime, but he rather scorned the 
idea that a crow, or a rat, or a snake could ever help 
him in any way. 

A long time after this had taken place, at the palace 
of the king in this country, the queen was on top of the 
house washing her hair; she had taken off her jeweled 
necklace and laid it down, and when her hair was dry 
went below and forgot it. Then the crow who had 
been rescued by the traveler long ago, flying over the 
house saw the necklace and said, "This would be a 
good present to give to that traveler who pulled me 

66 



ITINERATING ON ROOF OF THE WORLD 

out of the chasm/' so he picked it up with his bill, took 
it to him and told him where he got it. 

The next day the traveler, with the necklace, met 
the man he had rescued and remarked, "Look here, I 
did n't think that crow would be much of a friend, but 
see, he has brought me these jewels that belong to the 
queen," The man who had been rescued, upon hear- 
ing this, at once went to the king and said, "The 
queen's necklace you will find in the house of a certain 
man," and gave the name of his rescuer. 

The king at once sent his men, arrested the traveler, 
and cast him into prison. He was about to starve to 
death in that horrible place when the rat that he had 
rescued, and who lived there, came and asked, "How 
did you happen to get in here ?" The man told him the 
story of his arrest and of the ingratitude of the man he 
had rescued, and that he was almost starved, and that 
he would surely die unless help came to him very soon. 

The rat went away, entered into the king's palace, 
stole food from the king's table, carried it to the man in 
the dungeon, and so saved him. 

On another day the snake came along and, seeing 
him there, asked, "How did it happen that you are here 
in prison ?" The traveler told the story again, and the 
snake said, "Never mind, I'll get you free." Now this 
snake was a necromancer and made himself into a 
ghost-snake which could be felt but not seen, wound 
himself around the king's neck and almost choked him 
to death. 

The king called for his great men, his wise men, 
and his lamas. The lamas cast lots and told the king 

67 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

that this ghost-snake that was choking him was one of 
the patron-saints of the man he had in prison, and that 
if he would loose the prisoner and treat him kindly his 
choking would cease. So he called for the prisoner to 
be brought before him, gave him much money and 
many jewels, and sent him away wealthy. The king's 
troubles stopped, and the traveler was made happy by 
the help of the three whom he had doubted and 
scorned. 



68 



CHAPTER VII. 

How We Live. 

"Up the steep summit of my life's forenoon, 
Three things I learned, three things of precious worth, 
To guide and help me down the western slope : 
I have learned how to pray, and toil, and save ; 
To pray for courage to receive what comes, 
Knowing what comes to be divinely sent. 
To toil for universal good, since thus and only thus 
Can good come unto me. 
To save by giving whatsoe'er I have 
To those who have not — this alone is gain." 

Johnny had gone ahead of the mission in April 
with the drugs and all the freight that could be spared, 
and had rented three rooms in two Tibetan inns for the 
two families. He scrubbed, and cleaned, and papered 
with Chinese wall-paper, and everything was as clean 
as he could get it. But in the other half lived a Tibetan 
family with their servants and slaves. There was the 
barn downstairs, full of yak, pigs, horses, donkeys, and 
piles of manure. There were no screens, no windows, 
but strips of wood over openings in the wall which 
closed with wooden doors, making it dark as a dungeon 
inside. Flies, heat, dirt and threshing chaff were 
everywhere. Little Dorris had a spell of fever, not 
very severe, caused by the filth perhaps, but her "legs 
wouldn't go," .she said, and that was something new 

69 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

for her, for they had always been able to go before. 
Baby Dorothy had dysentery for months and only got 
better in the fall. 

From July 24th until December 10th we lived in 
this inn. Then we were able to get a house for our- 
selves. Mr. and Mrs. Ogden came on October 31st 
and lived in an inn for more than a year, when they 
got a house and fixed it for themselves. Glad indeed 
were we all when a mud palace for each family was 
procured, and it could be scraped clean of manure, 
whitewashed, cleaned, and scrubbed. The screening 
taken out for the new house was used, and the glass 
made into windows, and the slats were cut out, and 
we could have light and air once more. There was 
quite a diminishing of dirt and smells, and we could sit 
under our own walnut trees, have a little garden, be 
clean, have a place for the babies to play, and get rid 
of a few germs and noises. 

The houses at Batang are nearly all of two stories, 
with a third a kind of shed over only half the roof. 
The four walls are built of the yellow mud, something 
as concrete buildings are put up in this country, the 
wooden frame being filled with mud and tamped solid 
with round wooden "pounders ;" then the frame is 
raised, and so on to the required height. Great round 
beams stand upright every few feet in the form of a 
square, six upright beams running one way and five 
the other way, with heavy crosspieces for holding the 
floor overhead and the heavy, flat mud-roof. The 
partitions are made with boards and must be placed 
where the upright poles are, and all grooved and 

70 



HOW WE LIVE 

driven in, as the house has to be made without nails. 
The doors are hung with a pivot at top and bottom, 
and fitted into holes made for the purpose. 

This is the average house. Some are but one story, 
dark and filthy. Others are five stories; the lower is 
dark, with crude stone floors, and, as it has always 
been used for a barn, can not be lived itl, but is used 
as storehouse for wood, for grain-boxes, and for hay 
for the horses and cows. The family lives on the sec- 
ond floor. In our house the courtyard was a cesspool 
of filthy water and the ground floor one foot deep in 
manure. It was dug and scraped and cleaned and 
scrubbed; the courtyard was filled with stones and 
dirt. Whitewash made the walls of mud all white. 
It did smell nice and clean. Then the big clay stove 
was knocked to pieces and carried out of the prospec- 
tive bedroom, some floor was put in, and the black 
crosspoles above ceiled, to keep the clay and bugs from 
falling on our beds. The floors were scalded and 
scraped, and scalded and scraped again. The walls 
were papered with Chinese paper a bit like light-brown 
wrapping paper, and we were about ready to "move 
home." 

Furniture was scarce, as the Chinese half-breed 
carpenters had to be taught how to make it. But we 
had a small table or two, one small folding rocking- 
chair, our beds of wooden frames corded with yak- 
hide strings, our own dishes, and a small cookstove 
brought from Shanghai. We were all well and happy 
to be alone in the greatest haven that can be had on 
the mission field — a home. 

7* 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

We bought two cows and had our own milk and 
butter. We had bought milk, but it was so dirty, as 
they have no strainers and never wash their own 
hands or the cow. At first we used their butter, but 
had to cook it and strain out the hairs, etc., and it 
was n't very good. They do n't wash the churns, 
either, so the butter does not smell very fresh ; no 
salt is used in it, and the cakes are patted out with 
the bare hands. Salt is used in their "butter tea," 
but it is such dirty stuff, dried and swept up on the 
top of the mud-houses, that we refine all that we use. 

The lights commonly used are pitch-pine slivers of 
wood. Sometimes they use butter lamps, but these are 
more often burned in front of their idols, as most of 
the people are too poor to afford butter to burn. We 
use candles and have a bit of kerosene for photo- 
graphic work and to use on state occasions, like Christ- 
mas time and Fourth of July. 

Sugar, coffee, soap, candles, medicine, tea, and 
anything in the line of stores must be procured in 
Chungking or Shanghai, and we estimate these just 
about cost their weight in silver by the time they reach 
us. It takes from five to six months to send an order 
and have the goods returned to us from Shanghai. 
The Tibetans do not raise vegetables, caring only 
for the grain. The Chinese located here have small 
gardens, and during the first year we could buy 
from them a few onion tops, cabbage, turnips, and 
an occasional carrot. We had cabbage in various 
forms that first winter. We had it creamed and 
boiled and fried, in kraut cold and hot, and in Chinese 

72 




Our mud palace in Batang. 




A Tibetan house where the night is spent. This is a stop for 

dinner. 



HOW WE LIVE 

fashion. I don't think cabbage and turnips very 
good, either. We had a few messes of potatoes the 
size of marbles. In the fall, when the yak are just off 
the grass, we get some good beef; but in the winter, 
when they are about starved, it is difficult to eat yak- 
meat at all. We can get pork, also, but as the pigs 
eat very little besides the filth from the streets and 
look as if they had just recovered from a good squeez- 
ing between rollers, and are so poor that they have to 
be "blowed up" (which the Chinese do by blowing 
them up from one of the feet) before they can be 
scraped, the meat is n't as satisfactory as it might be. 

However, the next year we were not so badly off, 
for we had sent home for seeds, and our gardens were 
a precious thing to us, I can tell you. We have now 
just the same vegetables as you do in America, except 
watermelons, and they don't mature. Fruit is the 
thing we miss the most. We have nothing but 
peaches and grapes. I tried to make peach jelly, but 
it would n't "jell." For breakfast food we can not 
get "Post Toasties" and "Kellogg's Corn Flakes," but 
we have rice sometimes and cooked tsamba, with sugar 
and cream, and eggs, as we have our own chickens, a 
bit like the American leghorns. Tibetan eggs, when 
bought, have an uncanny way of popping and sending 
forth an odor, as bad eggs are supposed to be bought 
and sold. Like as not they have taken them from 
under the hens when two weeks had passed ; I sup- 
pose they consider them meaty and wholesome! 

The flour is out, and more must be made to-day. 
The big box is unlocked, and Tsuden, the servant, 

73 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

takes a bushel of wheat to the stream, washes it, skims 
off the chaff and unfinished grains, carries it to the 
top of the flat roof, and spreads it out on matting to 
dry. He stays near it, keeping the droves of English 
sparrows from eating it all up. He then picks out 
the little stones and pebbles, as it has all been threshed 
out with flails on the flat mud-roof and swept up with 
the small brooms of weeds, dirt as well as wheat. 
Now he carries it to the water-mill and the flour is 
made by grinding the wheat between two millstones. 
This way it is fairly clean, but lacks whiteness and 
the springy quality of home flour. 

Of course, we have to teach them to wash dishes, 
as they have never seen a plate, cup, glass, or a knife 
and fork, and a dishrag might be used as a pocket- 
handkerchief or washcloth, and the dishpan for a 
foot-tub, as the Chinese so often do. The Tibetan has 
a wooden bowl, which he carries in the front of his 
gown, and licking it clean is his way of washing it, 
after which he wipes it on his sleeves and puts it into 
his gown until he is ready to use it again. This is 
the only food implement he knows about. 

Wash-pans and soap were things unknown to the 
Tibetans until the coming of the Chinese, who take 
civilization in a way and of their own with them. 
Floors have to be scrubbed and scalded twice a week, 
unless we wish to be crowded out by inhabitants 
smaller than ourselves. 

Finally everything was kept pretty well out but 
the rats. It seemed impossible to get the boards of 
the floor and the ceiling and the mud-walls close 

74 



HOW WE LIVE 

enough to keep them from dancing jigs in the wash- 
pan and chewing the wallpaper. 

Though our food costs as much or more than at 
home, the clothing does not, for the latest style is not 
at all important. A new hat once in eight years is 
all we need, as a sun helmet is worn all the year. As 
for the rest of the garments, we send for cloth and 
make what is needed. When everything else gives out, 
what is left of the doctor's trousers makes fine little 
garments for the girls; and he does wear out a lot 
of them riding so much. They get patched sometimes, 
and if a Chinaman does the patching the patch goes 
on the outside; and if it is not always of the same 
color it does not matter, for the Tibetans are not at 
all particular as to the blending of colors. 

Our shoes are a problem, but we make Chinese 
shoes of black velvet for the babies. It is poor stuff, 
and worse leather for soles; but as it is dry nearly 
all the year, they serve the purpose. 

If the mission as a whole were dropped suddenly 
into the midst of a fashionable American church, amid 
the stylish garments of the day, it would n't be up 
to date with regard to hats, tight-fitting garments, 
shoes, and the latest in the men's clothing department ; 
but, then — we couldn't be dropped. So as it takes 
three months to get home, we pick up the new civili- 
zation by degrees as we come to it, and are able to 
assimilate it gradually, especially these wonderfully 
buttoned gowns and the immense hair-dressing with 
its wonderful curls. 

Shall I tell you what we do for a whole week? 

75 - 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

It will not sound so elegant, but perhaps you can see 
us a bit plainer and be with us in your hearts. 

It is Monday; washday always. The Tibetan 
woman comes and fills with water the big iron pans 
that are built in over the clay stove. Tsuden sweeps 
the little courtyard with his little bunch of weeds ; the 
cows are milked, breakfast over, and the soiled clothes 
sorted and given to the woman. If it is a new woman, 
she does n't know anything about the washboard or 
soap, and has to be taught ; and if one is not careful 
the colored things go with the white ones, and there 
is likely to be an awful mix with all washed at once 
in little more than a teacup full of water. So the 
clothes must be watched until they are on the line, the 
tubs washed, and the women gone for their dinner. 
After noon they are shown how to sprinkle and fold 
the garments ; the evening work is done, and it is the 
first day. 

Tuesday is ironing day. They must be taught to 
iron the clothes, and it is no easy work to a native 
who has never seen or handled an iron. 

Wednesday is devoted to scrubbing and scalding 
the floors, with the daily work which must always be 
done. 

Thursday is washday again. Things do get dirtier 
than they do at home. The houses are mud, the 
windows and doors are very open, the wind blows 
and dirt flies. On Thursday evening the little union 
prayer-meetings of the four mission families that are 
there are held, and they are good indeed. 

Friday is ironing day again, and Saturday is house- 
cleaning day once more. 

7 6 



HOW WE LIVE 

Then, on Sunday, the preaching service and Sun- 
day-school in the morning, and our afternoons we 
usually spend alone. On Sunday evening we have our 
own little prayer-meeting — just our own mission — for 
strength and plans for the week. 

Of course, I have only told you the weekly routine 
of regular housework. It does n't include the trips, 
the dispensary, the daily and hourly teaching, the beg- 
gars and poor who come for help, the thousand-and- 
one things which fill the life of the workers on a 
mission field. 

Neither have I told you of the heartaches we have 
sometimes ; of feeling as if we were forgotten by the 
busy ones at home; of our uneasiness when one of 
our own little band is ill or a baby ailing; of the sin 
and degradation around us and the forlorn people 
who demand from us always ; of the hopeless lives and 
endurance of pain upon faces that expect nothing 
more. 

Ah, yes, there is a bit of Gethsemane in it all, O 
my Master; but only a tiny portion to us who are so 
weak. For Thou hast borne it all long ago, and left 
only a little for us. 

Neither have I told you of our compensations, 
You say, "You sacrifice so much." That is just what 
we don't do, for He whom we serve makes it up to 
us one hundred-fold, yea, one thousand-fold, in His 
nearness, His strength, His comforting, and makes 
for us the heart-sunshine, from which we may give 
to those who demand so much. For in Him are com- 
fort and peace, and we do not lack for anything in 
His service. 77 



CHAPTER VIII. 
The Man with the Broken Head. 

"Even unto the least of these." 

Not so many days after getting to Batang and 
opening the little mud dispensary and putting the beds 
up in the inn, a big red card came from the Chinese 
official asking Dr. Shelton to come to the yamen, as 
he wished to see him about a small affair. Seizing 
his hat, with some uneasiness he went to the house of 
the official. The official received him most graciously, 
gave him the chair of honor, and insisted on filling 
his teacup several times. Then he asked after the 
health of both families for several generations back, 
until finally, squirming around, Dr. Shelton said, "You 
sent for me ; what was it you wanted me to do ?" 
"Oh," said the official, "there 's a Tibetan down here 
that 's hurt a little. A rock fell and struck his head. 
I 'd like to have you go down and fix him up." "All 
right," replied the doctor; and after another siege of 
Oriental bowing and scraping he goes to find the in- 
jured man. Going by the dispensary, he gets a wash- 
pan, hot water, bandages, and instruments for fixing 
a scalp wound. He goes to the Tibetan house and 
finds the poor fellow on a pile of straw and manure. 
He had been carried and laid there about two hours 

78 



THE MAN WITH THE BROKEN HEAD 

before. The doctor found that, instead of it being a 
scalp wound, the skull was crushed and the brains were 
oozing from the wound. He dropped the instruments 
on the ground and went back to the official faster 
than he went the first time. After gaining admittance 
he marched up to him and said : "I can't operate on 
that man. I dare not. He will die if I do, and I 'm 
not going to touch him." "Well, but you must do 
something. Can't you do anything for him?" objected 
the official. "Yes, I can ; but I do n't want to, for if 
he died under the foreigner's knife it might mean the 
lives of us all." "Well," replied the mandarin, "you 
go on, and I '11 stand back of you, whatever the re- 
sult may be." So back went the doctor in great fear, 
to do what he knew he ought to do to save the life 
of this man. It seemed that so much depended on 
the success of the first surgical work, perhaps the 
lives of the foreigners there, the stability and possi- 
bility of a Tibetan mission. It seemed a pity to de- 
stroy all the work and hope of years that had gone 
before with a stroke or two of the surgeon's knife ; but 
it must be done, and with shut teeth and a passionate 
prayer for help he went to work. The poor fellow 
was lifted and placed on a door and carried into a 
Tibetan house. A sheet was taken and stretched up 
to keep the dirt from falling on him as the doctor 
worked. He began washing and shaving and cleaning 
that terrible wound, in the midst of the dirty, lousy, 
tangled, buttered hair. Then twelve pieces of bone 
were taken out, and the wound was closed over and 
bandaged. The poor fellow was just about used up 

79 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

when he came out from under the anaesthetic. Dr. 
Shelton came home with a set face and said: "The 
man will be dead in the morning. I did the best I 
could, but I do n't see how he can possibly live." We 
felt pretty downhearted that night and fearful of what 
the morrow would bring. After breakfast he went to 
see his patient, and the chap tried to raise up off his 
straw bed to thank him ! With a face perfectly blank 
with surprise, and yet in which awe and thankfulness 
were mingled, he returned and said : "Well, I did the 
best I could ; but by all the knowledge of medicine I 
possess, that man should have been dead this morning. 
The Lord has healed him." There was no other ex- 
planation for it. 

In a month the fellow was ready to walk home, one 
hundred miles, and he left the city. 

One day some three or four months later, as Dr. 
Shelton was coming to dinner from the dispensary, 
he saw two old people — about fifty or sixty years of 
age, perhaps — coming towards him; and as they ap- 
proached, down both went on their knees, bumping 
their heads on the ground. He asked: "What is the 
matter ? What do you want ? Get up ; we do n't allow 
that." They arose and took a few steps, and down 
they went once more, kotowing and pounding the 
ground with their foreheads. Again he told them to 
get up, and asked again what it was they wanted. 
Then they said: "Do you remember that man whose 
head was caved in? Well, he is our son, and we have 
come to thank you for saving his life." They did not 
know that the foreign doctor had had little to do with 

80 




"The man with the broken head." 



THE MAN WITH THE BROKEN HEAD 

that; but as they never had heard the name of Jesus, 
they could only think it was the foreigner. 

Being too poor to hire a horse, those two old people 
had come about one hundred miles on foot, about five 
or six days' journey, to thank this man for saving 
their son. Out of his dirty sheepskin gown the man 
pulled a chicken, a wad of butter, and some eggs as 
pay for this medical service. The money value was n't 
much, but the heartfelt gratitude could n't be measured 
in silver and gold. Lives wasted among these people? 
Ah, no; for in the Master's service there is always 
compensation that is infinitely more of value than gold 
or precious stones. 



81 



CHAPTER IX. 
A Tibetan Sunday-School. 

"Yeshu gna la jam bar zat, 
Sung rap gna la song gin duk. 
Trugu nam kong gi yni di, 
Di tso stop chung kong ni chi. 

"Yeshu gna la jam so, 
Yeshu che la jam so, 
Yeshu gna la jam so, 
Dam cho la dri ne duk." 

Do you hear them singing ? It is Sunday morning ; 
the little chapel organ is playing, and they are singing 
of Jesus in that queer language, yet the Name — that 
wonderful Name — is much alike in all tongues. Step 
into the little mud house and visit with them this 
service hour. The house is full ; yes, crowded. More 
than two hundred are jammed into that small room. 
The windows are open, but still it does n't smell very 
fresh in there ; there are such a lot of buttery Tibetans 
— dirty, dirty little children ; thirty or forty of them — 
and a lot of Chinese that haven't lately had a bath. 
But it does n't matter ; everybody is singing — some in 
Tibetan, some in Chinese — and the tune is n't always 
the best in the world ; but they are all making a noise, 
and that is something. 

82 



A TIBETAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL 

Mr. Ogden is leading on one side of the room, 
perhaps in Chinese, as the audience is a mixed one, 
and Dr. Shelton on the other side in Tibetan. They 
all sing two or three songs, then the crowd is divided. 
Mrs. Ogden takes the women into one room, Dr. 
Shelton the children into another, and Mr. Ogden 
preaches the sermon proper to the more educated Chi- 
nese audience of soldiers and a few farmers. Perhaps 
he will play a song or two on the phonograph Dr. 
Loftis brought, or give them a Chinese record or two 
on the same, which they enjoy very much indeed. 
Shall we peep into the other rooms too? Mrs. Ogden 
has the women, many of them with tiny babies. She 
talks a little to them, tries to teach them a song, one 
line at a time, as none of them can read, and they 
are always jumping up to look out of the window to 
see what 's happening outside. As much as she says 
in teaching, perhaps even more to them, is her own 
clean dress and face, her neatly combed hair, and 
white-dressed baby Ruth looking like a little white 
flower in that crowd of dirty women and dirtier babies. 
A native woman with clean, washed clothes carries the 
white baby while the mother teaches. 

Dr. Shelton is in another room, sitting on the floor 
or on a low T stool, and thirty-five or forty dirty little 
children are squatted around him. He is holding a 
Sunday-school card in his hand, after giving each one, 
and is telling them the story as it is pictured on the 
card. Between times he teaches the names of the 
apostles, of the father and mother of Jesus, of the 
books of the Bible. These are all to be committed. 

83 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

These lads and lasses know little of books, and the 
cards are in English, anyway. 

In half an hour Mr. Ogden calls them all into the 
bigger room. The song, " *T is midnight, and on 
Olive's brow," is sung and the communion given to 
the little crowd of Christians, about fifteen of them 
now, besides ourselves. The crowd is very quiet, and 
it is good to partake with them. 

The questions are so often asked: "Is it any use 
to preach to these people?" "Don't you think it a 
waste of time to spend your lives among them?" 
"Are n't they too far down in the scale of humanity 
for them to ever comprehend Christianity ?" "Do you 
see any improvement or any difference in their lives 
after they become Christians ?" Let me answer these 
questions in the order I have written them. This first 
kind of question is asked us over and over again. Yes, 
it is of use to preach to them, because we are com- 
manded to do so; they need it; and is there anything 
better in the world to teach to a man or woman or 
child ? A waste of time ? Nay ; but a life well spent. 
It is only a little one man can do against years of super- 
stition and heathenism, but the little is the beginning 
and points to the way for others to follow ; for as long 
as the Book is read, just so long will there be followers 
of the Nazarene to carry to those who do not know 
the story of His life. Perhaps we miss much of the 
outside of what is called happiness, but we gain a heart- 
happiness which is infinitely more; and what does it 
all count in the end? We must all die some time, 
somewhere, some day ; and if the Master is forgotten 

8 4 




On the front row is the first little Sunday-school that the mission 
had at Batang. 




A pile of carved "mani" stones. 



A TIBETAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL 

every day, can we expect Him to remember us? You 
say they are too low down, dear friends? Ah, yes, 
when you judge by schools, by cleanness, by living, by 
morals. But is n't it the heart, after all, that is the 
measure of the man? These people, many of them, 
are tender-hearted, generous, kind, loving, and are so 
thankful for a word of loving sympathy. It is true, 
there are rascals among them, and they might flay you 
with a smile if the opportunity offered. But, do you 
judge America by its worst men ? I 'm afraid some 
of those black, buttery Tibetans would come out far 
ahead of some of the "white slavers" if opportunity 
of knowing the right was used in the balance scales of 
character. To require the same standard for Chris- 
tianity there, where it has never been known, and here 
in this land, with churches everywhere, is not reason- 
able. That is one of the marvels of the Christ, so 
sweet, so simple that a child or a savage may under- 
stand and live, yet so marvelous that men possessing 
the keenest and most brilliant intellects are not able 
to comprehend Him. To them we teach love and the 
forgiveness of their enemies, to worship the true God, 
to burn or put away all their idols, to cleave to one 
wife, to tell the truth, and to give of their pittance 
to the ones poorer than they. It is enough; could 
you ask for more or less? 

Mr. Ogden is most careful in his training and in 
his teaching. The conditions are so different from the 
homeland. At the first the people know absolutely 
nothing of Christ. They come to him for a year or 
a year and a half ; then, if at the end of that time they 

85 . 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

are still in earnest and know the simple truths, they 
are baptized. Do they ever fall and make mistakes 
and go back to the old lives? Yes, some of them go 
wrong and fail, but they are helped up and start again. 
Do you ever stumble and go wrong sometimes, with 
all the good so near to you ? 

Perhaps the first difference noticed in those who 
become Christians is the look on their faces and their 
trying to "clean up." If the convert is a Chinaman, 
he will likely put a clean gown over a dirty one, but 
that does n't matter ; he is trying. They learn that 
every seventh day is "worship" day; that there is a 
God that is neither brass, stone, nor mud; one who 
listens and helps and comforts. The Tibetans are a 
little slower learning to clean up than the Chinese, 
perhaps because they have fewer clothes, and washing 
is such a foreign element in their lives. But those who 
are in our homes learn that we wash and put on our 
cleanest gowns that day, and slowly but surely they 
try to have theirs clean for that morning, to have their 
heads buttered and braided, and faces and hands 
washed, no matter if they are barefooted and have 
rings of dirt around their arms, as far up as the water 
and foreign soap has reached. 

It is said by some man that, standing on the hills 
above the city of Canton, the sound that reaches you 
is all in a minor key, a tone of sadness inexpressible, 
and you do not wonder, after scanning the faces of 
hundreds and hundreds carrying the hopeless look of 
the centuries, coupled with the years of ceaseless toil 
for a pittance of bread. To them Christ has not yet 

86 



A TIBETAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL 

been taken. Poor China ! The souls of her people all 
live in minor tones, and not until the knowledge of 
hope in Him shall reach them will the wailing change 
to the major chorus of praise. 

Will you take a peep into the mission school in 
Nankin and see the bright, clean, happy faces there? 
Here is a little girl walking on her knees. What is 
the matter? Oh, the feet were bound too tightly and 
had to be amputated. And that little baby over there, 
she is too young to go to school, is n't she ? Yes, 
but Miss Lyon found her out among the graves, where 
she had been thrown to die or be eaten by the street 
dogs, and the school girls love to care for her, and 
Miss Lyon sees that she is clothed and fed. But you 
wanted to hear about the Tibetan children at Sunday- 
school ; but I could n't help but give you a glimpse 
of this Christian school, though it is only a peep. We 
will go back to Batang again, and you can walk in at 
the side door and up to the front, and have a seat of 
honor and take a look at them all. In one corner are 
the women ; on one side are the Chinese men, and on 
the other Tibetans, while right around the organ clus- 
ter the day-school boys who sing best and know the 
words and can read the songs. They have been in 
school a few months and know them. 

Do you see that little fellow with big ears and big, 
bright eyes? He has just been in school a short time. 
His father was cook to a few soldiers and ate opium, 
and the little fellow had what food he could find and 
the few dirty garments he could get from somewhere. 
He belongs to the mission school now, has his head 

87 . 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

shaved, and a bath and two suits of clean clothes, and 
right proud is he of the fact, and you will have to ask 
Mr. Ogden whether he learns quickly or not. Then 
that little girl that looks so much cleaner than the rest ? 
Yes, she is a school girl, and Mrs. Ogden has had her 
for four years. The big boy over there looking quite 
clean and important is Li Guay Guang. He has been 
in the mission for six years. He is a Christian and can 
take charge of the services now ; he is about eighteen 
years old and is married to a little Tibetan girl, "Can- 
dro," who goes to school with him. The other little 
chap is Li Guay Guang's brother and is about thirteen 
years old now. He was starving, lousy, sore-headed, 
and freezing when the mission took him. Mr. Ogden 
baptized him last summer. He can preach and lead 
a prayer-meeting if they ask him to, and sing about 
the best of the group. Another little girl over there ? 
Yes, she is in school too. Mr. Ogden got her and 
had her head shaved and washed, and gave her two 
changes of clothes. She is a Tibetan. 

Did you look at the faces outside and all along 
the road as you came? Is there any difference be- 
tween those and the ones you see here? Perhaps in 
the writing I have not made you see the contrast in 
the lives and faces of these people with whom we 
work, and to whom hope of the future for the first 
time has come; but I have tried, and I would have 
you know this, that all men who come in even a small 
way in touch with the life of the Nazarene live lives 
that are sweeter, purer, and brighter if they wish 
them to be. 

88 




A Tibetan beggar asking in a most polite way for 



CHAPTER X. 

A Mission Day-School. 

"I hear the voices of children 

Calling from over the seas, 
The wail of their pleading accents 
Comes home upon every breeze. 

"And what are the children saying, 

Away in these heathen lands, 
As they plaintively lift their voices 
And eagerly stretch their hands? 

"O, Buddha is cold and distant, 

He does not regard our tears; 
We pray, but he never answers; 
We call, but he never hears. 

"We grope in the midst of darkness, 
With none who can guide aright: 
O share with us, Christian children, 
A spark of your living light." 

Yes, there are babies everywhere in Batang: little 
ones and big ones, pretty ones and ugly ones, babies 
somebody loves and babies not wanted at all. You 
see them rolling around in the dirt, and it is such 
dirty dirt that you want to pick them up and wash 
and dress them and put them in school, and not let 
them play all day and never learn to read or to do 

89 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

anything else but keep alive. They know nothing 
whatever of school or books or study ; but they know 
a lot of the worship of demons and devils, and of the 
burning of butter lamps in front of the great painted 
Buddha or some of his reincarnations. Perhaps they 
might be divided into two classes : those who must go 
to the lamasery to be trained and taught as priests, and 
those who remain to care for the home. 

The eldest son always goes to become a priest; 
sometimes more than one son goes, if he can be spared 
and the family is a large one. He enters the monastery 
at five or six years of age, and dons the brick-red gown 
and has his head shaved. During the first years of his 
life, unless he is to be a lama of great authority, he 
is a kind of servant to the older priests, running er- 
rands, carrying wood and water, or acting as personal 
body servant to some of the older men. 

They are taught a little every day ; some learn let- 
ters or commit long prayers and lists of lucky and un- 
lucky things to do. They learn to worship the great 
idol as well as hundreds of lesser idols — some male, 
some female — or pictures used for the placating of 
devils and demons by which they are always sur- 
rounded. This worship is through prayers or by eat- 
ing bits of food as they sit chanting. Their food con- 
sists of tsamba rolled in a wad, which hungry dogs are 
always watching for and snap up at once. Sometimes 
sour milk snapped from the third finger is thrown out 
to appease demons with large stomachs and needle- 
sized necks who never get enough to eat. 

It looks rather pitiful to see the little fellows don 
90 



A MISSION DAY-SCHOOL 

the weird costumes in their yearly dances, stepping 
and whirling with the great heads of animals made of 
paper and worn over their faces, all as worship. Does 
it not seem as if the little chap would get afraid and 
lonesome, and want to run home to his mother for a 
bit of comfort, away from these great, big, solemn 
priests and their incessant drumming and chanting? 
One feels as though he would want to get back home 
once in a while, even if his bed was on the ground, 
with only a goatskin or sheepskin covering, where he 
would n't be lonesome any more and could play awhile 
with the brothers and sisters, and not have to be 
whipped if he forgot his long prayers or failed to sit 
cross-legged in a perfectly correct manner. However, 
it is the greatest honor that can come to a Tibetan 
home to have a son at the lamasery, for he has a great 
deal of authority, and the other people all do as he 
says. He can command the best wages and the best 
food for his prayers and chanting, and the wealth of 
the land is all owned by the lamas, while the rent from 
the fields is all to be paid to the monastery. 

Perhaps it would be better to say "was," as now 
in the region where the mission is located there are 
no lamaseries, except very small ones, and the tax is 
all paid to the Chinese Government. But such was 
the custom before the Chinese took possession of the 
country. Such is the life of the little boys who are 
to become priests. The other little fellows remain at 
home, herding the goats, sheep, or yak, helping in the 
fields, carrying water, churning butter tea, learning to 
grind the barley into tsamba, wearing one gown of 

91 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

goatskin or sheepskin until it is worn out; happy and 
dirty, with no books, no study, no washing of necks 
and ears, sleeping where they happen to be, mostly on 
the ground or boards built along the wall and raised 
a little from the floor. So it goes on, day after day, 
until the boy is grown and can go and live in his 
tent or bring a wife to his home or go out and make 
one of their own. Perhaps he learns to snare the musk 
deer or pheasant, or shoot a bear or tiger, and get the 
teeth to sell or wear. Of course he learns to chant the 
prayer "Om mani padme hum" and go on the proper 
side of the mani piles and lay up all the merit he can 
for himself in many ways by having prayer flags strung 
on strings and stretched about the house. Perhaps a 
prayer flag flies fastened to his gunstock. You see 
them on the side of long poles, and still others at the 
top of every pass ; but, of course, all Tibetans do these 
things, and the lamas most of all, for it is their busi- 
ness to be "holy" and "good." 

Since the Chinese have destroyed the great lama- 
sery and there is only place to take care of about 
one-seventh of the boys, and a tax of fifty per cent of 
all that is raised goes to the mandarin of the city, 
there seems to be more babies than are needed, or at 
least more than are wanted ; babies to be had for the 
asking and many for the buying. There are quite a 
number of the half-breed children who have only the 
mothers to care for them. The garrison of Chinese 
soldiers is constantly changing, and these men form 
ties that may be easily broken in that land, and they 
leave their homes, which are again soon occupied by 

92 



A MISSION DAY-SCHOOL 

soldiers from another company, and so on. It is a 
part of the Chinese plan to populate the country with 
Chinese. As so many of the Tibetan men were killed 
off in the war, this plan seems feasible. 

But listen, one day two men went to "spy out 
this land ;" right into the edge of this heathendom they 
went. The men and women ran in fear and barred 
their doors ; the children scurried into the gullies and 
grass like little wild rabbits. It was n't an easy way 
these men found, and the land was n't flowing with 
honey, though there was plenty of milk; but their 
hearts were wanting these Tibetans to know of Him. 
Soon the Foreign Christian Mission Board said, "Go !" 
and they went. 

Within five months the "man" had opened his 
school and a few of the rabbits were being tamed, only 
they did n't know it. They had to be caught first, and 
many were the traps used, though love and kindness 
and food and clothing were the only bait. The gar- 
dener's little girl came, for he had kept the vegetables 
growing for awhile, and had learned not to be afraid. 
She was a little, sober-looking, big-eyed mischief, and 
could keep the rest in a constant state of giggles and 
yet look perfectly sober when the man looked at her. 
Then another little wild-looking thing from the moun- 
tains came ; hair matted and filthy, and a piece of skin 
for a dress. And what does the "man" do ? He takes 
her to the Chinese barber and cuts and shaves all the 
tangled mass of hair off her head, sends her for a 
bath to the hot spring, and provides suits of clean 
garments for her. My, how they yell when they first 

93 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

get scrubbed ! But the little Chinese girl Mrs. Ogden 
supports is clean, and her head is shaved, too, and 
she begins to feel real important and almost as clean 
as the foreigners. 

But the school grows and the man has fifteen or 
twenty, and no books at all for the younger pupils. 
So their lessons must be written and prepared each 
day, and he has all sizes of pupils, from five years old 
to twenty-five. Every day for the little ones a sheet 
of paper is taken, and on it pasted a picture cut from 
the Ladies 3 Home Journal, or some picture from a 
magazine; then the Tibetan teacher writes below it, 
"dog," "cat," "horse," or "man" as it happens to be, 
and the little tots have their first lessons to read and 
remember, or learn to write ; so it must be done every 
day. For the older ones there is the Bible and hymn- 
book and tracts in Tibetan, but it is very difficult to 
do graded work and work as school work is meant in 
America. 

The man employs two Tibetan teachers: one who 
hears the lessons in Tibetan, one who is helping him 
make some school books ; for he is translating many 
of the songs into Tibetan, is writing tracts, is making 
a set of readers for Tibetan boys and girls, a geog- 
raphy, a physiology, and whatever else he may have 
time and strength to do, as well as preaching and 
teaching, loving and caring for his big church of 
children. Yes, all are children in the knowledge of 
love and sacrifice and in the service of the Master. 

Besides these two Tibetan teachers he also employs 
a Chinese scholar, for the Chinese pupils must learn 

94 



A MISSION DAY-SCHOOL 

to read and write their own language and have a 
knowledge of their own classics, or they can never 
hope to be employed by the Chinese Government. 
Don't you think the man's heart and life and hands 
are full? Yet he finds time to eat and sleep and go 
around over that city and poke into all kinds of holes 
for the sick and suffering and dying, feed those who 
are starving, send the suffering to the dispensary or 
take the needed medicine to them, and bury the dead, 
saying a prayer over a cheap wooden coffin, a prayer 
for mercy because the dead had not been told of the 
Christ in time, and a prayer for those who are left 
that they may know of Him. 

To these people who live in this land with no hope, 
only a hopeless endurance of fate written in their 
faces, this picture of heathenism is very true : 'Taint 
a starless sky; hang your picture with night; drape 
the mountains with long, far-reaching vistas of dark- 
ness; hang the curtains deep along every shore and 
landscape ; darken all the past ; let the future be draped 
in deeper and yet deeper night; fill the awful gloom 
with hungry, sad-faced, and sorrow-driven women and 
children. It is the heathen world, the people seen in 
vision by the prophet, who sit in the region and shadow 
of death, to whom no light has come, sitting there still 
through the long, long night, waiting and watching 
for the morning." And into this blackness comes a 
little Christian day school. The light is coming; as 
yet it is very tiny, but the Lord keepeth watch above 
His own, and as He guides and guards and helps the 
man there can be no failure; and after awhile, when 

95 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

enough are willing to serve the Master and do as He 
wills, there will not be only a small candle flame in 
one city on the border, but light everywhere in that 
land. 

There can be no better work than a Christian day 
school ; every day they study and sing of Him. When 
the children are educated Christians you have the 
future generations. It is difficult to pay the proper 
tribute to this man. Shall he not be called the man 
of the hour ? To see his work is so much greater than 
to write of it ; to know what he does, greater than to 
tell a little of what he accomplishes. 

The man is Mr. Ogden of Batang. 



96 







* 




Mr. Ogden holding a water prayer-wheel quiet so it may be 
photographed. 



l mm- x . 




The present dispensary and the house where Dr. Loftis died. 



CHAPTER XI. 

Our Little Doctor. 

SAFE IN THE ARMS OF JESUS. 

"Safe in the arms of Jesus, 

Safe on His gentle breast, — 
Here by His love o'ershaded, 

Sweetly my soul shall rest. 
Hark! 'tis the voice of angels, 

Borne in a song to me. 
Over the fields of glory, 

Over the jasper sea. 

"Safe in the arms of Jesus, 

Safe from corroding care, 
Safe from the world's temptations, 

Sin can not harm me there. 
Free from the blight of sorrow, 

Free from my doubts and fears; 
Only a few more trials, 

Only a few more tears. 

"Jesus, my heart's dear Refuge, 

Jesus has died for me; 
Firm on the Rock of Ages 

Ever my trust shall be. 
Here let me wait with patience, 

Wait till the night is o'er; 
Wait till I see the morning 

Break on the golden shore. 

97 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

"Safe in the arms of Jesus, 

Safe on His gentle breast, — 
Here by His love o'ershaded, 
Sweetly my soul shall rest." 

Th£re is no more fitting way to begin this chapter 
than to place the song he loved at its beginning, a 
song we still sing in memory of him, and which always 
brings the tears. We feel so sure that he is safe there, 
and in a measure he died that we might learn it. We 
were so sure of the way Tibet was to be converted, 
and did n't expect any Christians in our day ; and with 
his coming our plan was complete, but not the Mas- 
ter's. He was very kind to take the one who was 
ready, and leave us to learn to be humble; to say, 
"Master, we are ready to do Thy bidding;" to ac- 
knowledge our weakness and ask for strength; and 
the little doctor did all this. When we were humble 
enough to allow Him to work, He did so, and mightily. 
How patient God had been with our sureness and our 
plans ! But we must be taught before He could use us. 
It seems we get often in the way and do much to hin- 
der what might be done if we could just stay humble 
enough and "willing to be made willing" to be of use. 

To pay a proper tribute to Dr. Loftis seems an 
impossibility. He was so much the superior of us 
all in a spiritual sense. We stood with humbled hearts 
and bowed heads when he came. It is not possible 
to tell you of our love for him, nor of all we hoped 
and expected from his coming. 

It was during his short stay that Mr. Ogden and 

9 8 



OUR LITTLE DOCTOR 

Dr. Shelton went on the month's journey and had 
about six hundred patients, meeting many people, mak- 
ing friends among them, so that they need never be 
so afraid of a foreigner again. His being in the city 
made this possible. Dr. Shelton very seldom goes 
longer than a week, as some of the mission might get 
ill, and he would have to come home in a hurry. 

The two men returned from this trip on August 3d. 
Smallpox and typhus fever were everywhere. Dr. 
Loftis was ailing that day. The next day Mr. and 
Mrs. Ogden and the baby were ordered to the top 
of the mountain and away from the city, as there was 
•no vaccine for baby Ruth. Some things are better 
forgotten; past pain is not easily lived again, and I 
know of no better way to tell you about him, our be- 
loved little doctor, than in the sketches written of him 
at the time of his death. 



It was a cold morning in February. Dr. Loftis stood 
before the fire with an unopened telegram in his hand. 
It was from Batang, the city toward which his face was 
turned with a strange yearning. For weeks he had 
been waiting for favorable conditions to> start on the 
long, hazardous journey. Now it had been decided 
that he could go. His packing had been done with 
the eagerness of a schoolboy, and he was to be off on 
the morrow. But still he held the telegram unopened. 
When I asked why, he said, "I 'm just trying to de- 
cide first whether or not I '11 have the grace to obey 
if this tells me to wait a while longer to start." We 
understood; we had heard all the enthusiastic plan- 

99 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

ning for the new work, and had marveled often that 
one could be so eager and yet so patient. Dr. Loftis 
was a rare combination. He spent two months with 
us in Nanking, and every one in the station learned 
to love him as a brother. There was about him that 
indescribable something that attracted and held men 
in an unusual degree. So capable and strong, so 
humble and eager to learn, so thoroughly unselfish, so 
consecrated to the one purpose, and withal with a 
keen sense of humor that found the best and brightest 
side of everything. Soon we were bringing him our 
troubles and difficulties, and he seemed always to see 
a way out. How we rejoiced with Batang ! He would 
be to them all they had waited and hoped and prayed 
for through weary months. 

The telegram did not contain the dreaded mes- 
sage, and the next morning he was off. For two 
months we followed him in our imagination over the 
rough roads, through rapids and gorges, and over 
mountain passes until one bright morning in June the 
children said, "Doctor will reach Batang to-day/' 
Every day's journey had been traced on the map, with 
the children as interested audience. A few weeks 
slipped away. There was just time to get the happy 
letters from the Sheltons and Ogdens, rejoicing that 
the right man had found his way to them, and Dr. 
Loftis' enthusiastic praise of "my own people;" then 
came that dreadful message, "Dr. Loftis is dead !" If 
those words sent a pall over the hearts of our people 
here, can you imagine what it meant to Batang? For 
days we could n't talk about it. It seemed too cruel. 

ioo 



OUR LITTLE DOCTOR 

Our little mission family has had its disappointments 
and sorrows; times without number there have been 
when only the eye of faith could pierce the gloom, but 
this blow, from our human insight, was a mystery un- 
fathomable. We could only be silent before Him. 
Nankin. Mrs. Frank Garrett. 



Through the city of Tachienlu runs one of the 
main roads from China to Lassa, the capital. Here 
our missionaries, Dr. and Mrs. Shelton and Mr. and 
Mrs. Ogden, with their children, have become firmly 
entrenched, having by their devoted lives won the 
hearts of the entire community. Through years of 
hardship, loneliness, weariness, sickness, and death 
they have toiled on, and at length were cheered with 
the news that a colleague was on his way to join them. 

This was Dr. Z. S. Loftis, who reached them after 
four months of constant travel. But, like the patri- 
arch of old, he was only permitted to see the promised 
land from afar. Within two months after his arrival 
"he was not, for God took him." Only two short 
months, and yet, what we know of his character, his 
loss must have been appalling to his colleagues. With 
them our deepest sympathies. 

Dr. Loftis carried with him to Tibet the highest 
credentials of his profession. He had also qualified as 
a manufacturing chemist, and he looked forward con- 
fidently to the discovery of crude drugs, minerals, and 
chemicals from which to manufacture medicines for 
use in his medical practice. To know him was to 

IOI 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

love him, as was seen by the fact that every mis- 
sionary who met him — we among the number — coveted 
him as a colleague. He expressed one regret only 
upon arriving in China. When he saw the great need 
of workers he said, "I wish I could reduplicate myself 
one hundred times, so that I could work at each of 
the stations/' 

The Foreign Board made no mistake in their se- 
lection of Dr. Loftis for Tibet. He was the man we 
had all been looking for. He has come — and gone. 
Only a few short months a sojourner in the East, and 
yet he will be remembered, and his life will be an in- 
spiration as long as there is mission work to be done. 
His labor has not been in vain. And in obedience to 
the urgent call that is sounding from the Hermit King- 
dom we believe that others will arise with his spirit 
and take up the work, the contemplation of which had 
filled him with the keenest joy. 

Shanghai. James Ware. 



Dr. Loftis arrived here on June 17th, and about 
July 5th Mr. Ogden and I left for an itinerating trip 
we had been contemplating for some time, and were 
gone twenty-nine days, getting back here August 2d. 
For two days before we got back Dr. Loftis had been 
working hard unpacking his things ; so when the next 
day he did n't feel well he thought nothing of it, but 
that he had overworked in unpacking, and said he 
would go a little slower. The next day, however, he 
had fever and began having the symptoms of small- 

102 



OUR LITTLE DOCTOR 

pox, of which there is a great deal here. Still it was 
in doubt, as he had been successfully vaccinated when 
a child, and several times since, but it had failed to 
take. 

Then the eruption came out; but instead of the 
symptoms abating, they kept right on, and there ap- 
peared in addition to the smallpox the eruption of 
typhus fever. I was with him night and day and did 
all in my power, but when the secondary fever of the 
smallpox — the tubercular stage — came on, it was more 
than mortal could bear and he died, unconscious, at 
4 P. M., August 1 2th, not having been here two 
months. 

It seemed more than we could bear, for if ever a 
man appeared to have been chosen, fitted, and prepared 
by the Lord for a special work it was Dr. Loftis. 
What are we to do? We had waited and prayed so 
long for him. Then, when he came, he was so ob- 
viously specially prepared and fitted for this work; 
and now he is gone. You had not yet received his 
letters from here telling you of his arrival when you 
received our cablegram. 

We were all so happy. It had been the end of 
what seemed to us to be the best year by far for the 
Master's work since we came, nearly six years ago. 
You don't know what it means to us here. Is it 
possible you can send us another man — another doc- 
tor — at once ? We fear it is not possible. God knows 
what is for the best — we know that; but to human 
minds this appears truly a calamity. He lived in our 
home, or rather boarded with us, and we loved him 

103 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

as a brother. The baby was always looking for him 
and wanting to show "Doc Lof," as she called him, 
every little scratch she had. 

Batang. Dr. A. L. Shelton. 



Everything for the last year and a half had been 
planned and centered about Dr. Loftis' coming to us. 
Every step of that awful Yangtse River, the long jour- 
ney to Tachienlu, when we felt he was getting very 
close, and lastly the seventeen days over the mountains 
to Batang, and we grasped our little doctor's hand and 
knew he was safely with us. We were saving our 
green beans and peas and new potatoes for his coming 
(we did n't have any last year) ; even baby, when she 
asked for something and I said, "Wait a little," would 
say: "Is Doc Lof comes? Is Doc Lof comes ?" 

Soon after his arrival Mr. Ogden and Dr. Shelton 
took a month's journey through the Tibetan villages 
doctoring some six hundred people, while he took 
charge of the dispensary and cared for the women and 
children in the station. He fitted into his work and 
into our home life beautifully, declaring he would not 
exchange life work with any man living, and declaring 
in his quiet way "he had found his folks at last ;" and 
we were glad, so glad, to find him. He saved a Ti- 
betan who had taken opium, and the fellow's mother's 
gratitude was unbounded. He spoke of how glad he 
was to be so useful at once, and it is only a medical 
man who can be of immediate use. 

Whether to him came a premonition of his death, 
I know not. He spoke of being ill sometimes, and I 

104 



OUR LITTLE DOCTOR 

asked him if he felt badly; he answered, "No; it's 
coming ; it 's coming." His little caravan came in on 
Friday, July 30th, and he was very busy unpacking 
and putting things away on that evening and on Sat- 
urday. 

On Sunday afternoon he brought his graphophone 
down to the house for Mrs. Ogden and myself and the 
babies to hear, and we enjoyed it. 

On Monday the men returned from their itiner- 
ating trip, and we were all preparing to get settled 
and acquainted. He had two rooms — a study and bed- 
room — and he planned to build a bathroom and take 
the room we had for a chapel and fix it for a sick 
ward, so they could better care for the patients that 
came. 

Great hopes and dreams he had of the possibility 
of going home through Lassa by the time his furlough 
was due, and we believed it possible, especially for a 
medical man and a single man. 

On Tuesday evening he said he could not sleep and 
got out his World's Fair pictures and looked at them 
and listened to his graphophone play the songs sung by 
Trinity Choir, and imagined himself back in old St. 
Louis. 

He had some new books, and we were wild to read 
them. He had brought me "The Lady of the Deco- 
ration" and told me a bit of her history; also "What 
to Live For," marked heavily with his own thoughts. 

The new thrill of life he brought with him, the 
new knowledge, the strength to our little mission, you 
can never know. Everything was becoming too easy 

105 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

for the Tibetan border. Two new people had just 
written and said they had volunteered for Tibetan 
work — Mr. and Mrs. McLeod, to cross our journey 
home either at Shanghai or San Francisco. It was 
beautiful; but, Oh, the blow! 

On Wednesday Dr. Loftis came to breakfast and 
asked for a little milk toast ; said he was feeling badly, 
went home and to bed. Dr. Shelton said he was in 
for smallpox or some kind of fever. So on Thursday 
I went and made his room neat. He was unpacking 
and too ill to finish putting things away. He showed 
me a little fancy article his mother had made ; showed 
me the picture of his chum who came to China as he 
did; told me a towel I was handling was given him 
by a revenue officer's wife in the mountains, but was 
too ill to talk much, and besides we had lots of time 
to see his new things and hear of his friends and 
America. 

I came home that evening, and Dr. Loftis took to 
his bed. Dr. Shelton went to him and stayed with 
him until the end. In a day he announced "smallpox" 
— that was enough. Another day, and the unmistak- 
able typhus rash covered his body. Oh, how we hoped 
and prayed for our little doctor! 

Did you at home forget him and us? We were 
very far away from you all. I sent the doctor his 
meals and did the washing and all I could, but it 
seemed so very, very little compared with what we 
and the mission had at stake. 

Then the afternoon came when I heard Dr. Shelton 
sobbing in the yard, and he called me, telling that Dr. 

106 



OUR LITTLE DOCTOR 

Loftis had gone. I could not go to him, and he dare 
not come to us. I could only hug my two little girls 
and cry. 

We sent for Mr. Ogden, as he and his wife and 
baby had been sent from the city to keep the little 
one from taking the smallpox, as we had no vaccine. 

He came walking down the mountain in the dark 
and rain, and stayed with Dr. Shelton that night, and 
with our little doctor for the last time. 

It did not seem true at all — we had looked so long 
for him, and felt like this was a dreadful dream, and 
that he would still come to us. He was with us such 
a little while. 

To say that we were broken-hearted and that our 
work had seemingly come to a halt is saying very lit- 
tle. May his death more than fulfill what he hoped 
to do had he lived, and the Tibetan work be placed on 
so firm a foundation that all shall see 

"God 's in His heaven, 
All's right with the world." 

We did n't believe a man could be found to take 
his place, it had been so hard to find even one willing 
to come. Yet in God's own time, when the word got 
to Nashville and to the church that supported Dr. 
Loftis, a young man got up and went to the telegraph 
office and sent this message to President McLean, 
"1 11 go and take his place." Dr. Hardy was the man 
and is there now, doing the work Dr. Loftis went 
to do. 

107 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

"I may not know why death should come 
To take the dear ones from my home ; 
But though mine eyes with tears be dim, 
The Lord knows why — I '11 trust in Him. 

"So, though I may not understand 
The leadings of my Father's hand, 
I know to all He has the key — 
He understands each mystery. 

"And the dark clouds may hide the sun, 
The Lord knows why — His will be done." 

Upon the coming of this man of God and his going 
from us, upon the prayers of the people at home who 
again remembered us in our trouble, and upon our 
own weakness and humbleness so that we might be 
used, is founded the Batang Tibetan Mission. 

Words seem very weak to tell of this crisis in our 
lives and in the work. His own book perhaps would 
help you to know the princely soul of the man better 
than this, and though feeling that I have said but little, 
and that to this man we all owe so very much, yet there 
is a feeling of utter inability to write of him as I 
would and the prayer that through all the life of the 
mission and to all who know and read of him may 
the life and personality and death of our little doctor 
be a benediction. 



108 



CHAPTER XII. 

Tibetan Women and Their Home 
Life. 

"The toad beneath the harrow knows 
Exactly where each tooth-point goes ; 
The butterfly upon the road 
Preaches contentment to that toad." 

A Chinaman said one time, "Yes, the Tibetan 
women are just like the missionaries' wives; they rule 
their husbands and manage the home," which was 
much to the disgust of that celestial, as their women 
folks are supposed to have no say-so whatever, but 
be perfectly obedient and submissive to the master of 
the house in everything. The average Tibetan woman 
in her home has about the same right as the average 
American wife. If she has servants, she orders and 
controls them, carries the key to the grainroom, gives 
out the food, butter, and cheese, sometimes helps with 
the cooking, looks after the cattle and pigs, sends the 
servants to get wood or hay, and whatever else the 
household requires in its running, she looks after it. In 
the poorer houses there are no servants, and there is 
only one small mud-room with dirt floor, a few wooden 
bowls, an earthenware teapot for the butter tea, and if 
too poor to buy butter, bones are mashed and crushed 
and the marrow put in the tea in its place. Tsamba 

109 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

or barley flour is the best; so they very seldom have 
that, but dough-balls of buckwheat flour cooked in 
water, or pancakes of buckwheat flour cooked on a 
hot rock, with little or no meat. Beds are on the 
floor or ground, with their ragged clothes as cover- 
ings. Fire of sticks in a small clay stove, and no chim- 
ney, the smoke going where it will. There is a hole, 
usually, in the roof, where the smoke is supposed to 
go out, but it does n't generally please to. 

These people work in the fields of the better class 
and serve for their food and five cents a day. Body 
and soul stick together, but it does n't seem possible. 
Then there are always some babies to feed at that 
price. They often carry the small ones to the fields 
and lay them down in a corner while they work, or 
let an older child carry them. 

Polyandry has been the custom in this country, and 
is practiced yet in some places, but not so much in the 
city and vicinity of Batang. Once in a while a big 
fellow thinks his wife needs a good beating, and pro- 
ceeds to give it to her with a rawhide strap. They 
sell husbands or wives whenever the notion so takes 
them. One man sold his wife to a Chinese official for 
forty rupees. One Tibetan woman bought another's 
husband for five rupees and still owed one and a half 
rupees some two years after! 

The houses on the mountains are of the woven 
yak-hair and are the famed black tents of the Nomad 
tribes of Tibet. They are not very high, and have 
their campfires in the center; pieces of raw yak or 
sheep-meat hanging up on the inside, a few utensils, 

no 



TIBETAN WOMEN AND THEIR HOME LIFE 

a brass pot for tea, and a few bowls. Sour milk, 
cheese, meat, a bit of tsamba perhaps, and tea, which 
is legal tender most anywhere on the border, furnish 
the diet. A few ounces of tea will give a traveler a 
welcome for the night, and he will be treated in a 
most hospitable manner and given the best the tent 
affords. It is n't clean, and the churn that made the 
butter is one-fourth of an inch deep around the sides 
with sour milk, and is never washed; but it's the 
best they have, and is given freely. 

The clothing is only of skins, the beds more skins 
thrown in a corner, while the garment they wear is 
the only covering. In the summer time these tents 
are nearer the tops of the mountains, while as winter 
comes they come lower into the valleys. It seems 
very desolate and lonely, does n't it ? They are not 
able to read and have only the care of the flocks and 
herds, marriage, birth, and death. 

Nothing else besides to break the monotony of 
their lives, but occasionally a caravan of tea or cloth 
will stop near them for the night for protection and 
to let their animals graze, and these travelers can tell 
them tales of the world the other side of their moun- 
tains. 

Never do the flocks and herds of one valley en- 
croach upon the other men's grazing territory ; for if 
they do, there is apt to be a killing. The unwritten 
law among the tribes is strictly obeyed, the mountains 
forming as perfect a boundary as barbed wire or a 
''stake and rider" fence. 

In a house of the better class there are three stories, 
in 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

as a rule. The lower is used as the barn for their 
cows, yak, horses, mules, donkeys, and pigs; all are 
housed for the night in this part of the building. One 
room perhaps has the hay and straw, another the 
threshed grain, and all carefully locked and the mis- 
tress carrying the heavy keys. Upstairs is the big 
kitchen with its great clay stove, three or four big 
brass pots and Chinese pans upon holes built for 
them, a big bronze kang or barrel for water, which 
has never been washed or emptied since it was made ; 
two or three churns for making butter and tea, brass 
dippers of different sizes, shelves for brass teapots and 
some of earthenware, several silver-lined bowls, and 
also some plain wooden ones for the use of the serv- 
ants. On the floor of this big room is where the serv- 
ants sleep, stretched out on the floor indiscriminately 
and using their clothing for their covering and with 
their feet toward a big clay stove. 

Another is the mistress' room. It is fitted up for 
a reception-room, with the low tables and benches, 
leather stools, small charcoal fire over which the but- 
ter tea is kept hot all the time for the guest who 
happens to arrive. In this room the family eat, the 
master and mistress and the children and the guests, 
who are waited upon by the servants. 

Opening from this is an alcove used as a sleeping- 
room, the boards of the floor raised a few inches 
higher than the main part, much as a small rostrum, 
only not so wide. 

All Tibetan families of the better class have serv- 
ants, many of them own slaves. There is a custom 

112 



> 

-3 









•^ mm' ' ^ffk «**«p4 # 








TIBETAN WOMEN AND THEIR HOME LIFE 

whereby for a debt, or if they so desire, a man or 
woman wishing to become a slave in a wealthy family 
comes with four witnesses and vows to serve for a 
term of years or for life, and so becomes the property 
of the house. 

There seems to be work all the time for all but 
the mistress, who oversees it all in the home, as the 
master is usually away on a trading trip of some kind. 
The Tibetan lady has a quiet way with the slaves, and 
they seem to yield her implicit obedience. Quarrel- 
ing or sullenness occur very seldom, although the food 
of those serving is not of the best, but nearly always 
of the cheap kind, buckwheat instead of tsamba being 
used for the servants. 

There is one other room in the home: the sacred 
or idol-room. In this are two or three idols of bronze 
or plated gold, which are worshiped every day, and 
before whom is placed the butter lamp and bowl of 
holy water daily. In this place are the sacred books 
owned by the family and the ones the lamas read from 
when they come, unless they bring some of their own, 
which are supposed to be more efficacious for the occa- 
sion. Here are the drums of skulls, or imitations of 
them, rosaries of skull bones or coral or glass, bells, 
holy-water vases, and all their valuable garments of fur 
or cloth, which have come down from father to son and 
mother to daughter, gold and coral ornaments and 
gowns for festive occasions. 

The mistress of one house was an aristocrat and 
belonged to the ruling class before the Chinese be- 
headed or deported them all. She is a widow of per- 
8 113 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

haps fifty years. Into the home one daughter-in-law 
had been brought to be the wife of the two sons. One 
of them tired of this and left the home to marry an- 
other woman and make his own hearthstone, which 
greatly displeased the mother, as one object of poly- 
andry is to keep the home as one, and all the sons 
who are there making money for the one rooftree. 

She bitterly blamed the daughter-in-law, who in 
a measure showed authority in the home, and once in 
a great while the mistress showed her displeasure by 
leaving her usual place of sleeping and going up to 
the flat roof, w T here she had a small room, and stay- 
ing in it, drinking much wine and with one old slave 
to wait upon her. Then the daughter-in-law had the 
management of the affairs in her own hands. 

One son was a lama and stopped on his way to 
Lassa to visit his mother. He was her favorite son, 
and as he left, the old lady, with tears rolling down 
her cheeks, gave him sacks of barley, butter, cheese, 
and wine to take on his long journey. But a kind 
of tragedy seemed to hang over the home, for the 
servant woman who was cook died of syphilis and her 
two children of smallpox. The daughter-in-law had 
dysentery for months, but the old lady did not want 
the foreigner's medicine, and her husband was gone. 
Lamas came every day, read prayers, and beat drums 
for months. She grew weaker and weaker, opium be- 
ing given when the pain was too severe. Finally the 
husband was called home. He called for medicine the 
day before she died, and promised a horse or a yak, 
anything, if his wife could only be saved ; but it was 

114 



TIBETAN WOMEN AND THEIR HOME LIFE 

too late. She died and left a tiny baby three or four 
months old. 

A little time afterwards the baby was starving; it 
was not strong enough to thrive on the tsamba and 
butter, and the poor little thing cried all the time. 
One day at church the old lady came to me and pointed 
to the baby with tears in her eyes ; said it was going 
to die, and though she never loved the mother, she 
did love the baby girl ; she sobbed and cried and left 
us. Hurrying home, some rubber nipples that had 
been left over from the little foreign babies' bottle din- 
ner were found and fixed on a bottle full of clean, 
warm milk, and back to the baby it was sent. The 
little thing took it at once and soon began to grow. 
The father bought a new yak, so she could have 
plenty of milk. The nipple didn't last long. They 
said they washed it, but they did not, and the cat 
ate it one time. It had a coating of sour milk always 
on it and in the bottle; but the baby still thrives. 
Other babies came for the "rubber dinners," and our 
supply was soon exhausted. It was a wonderful thing 
to feed a baby like that. 

The old slave who had served this mistress for 
years for his food and a few clothes fell and broke 
his ankle. He asked for the foreign doctor, but the 
medicine made his ankle sting, and he said he did n't 
want him any more; so he stayed away. In nine or 
ten days the old fellow wanted him to come again. 
He and Johnny went. The old man lay with the 
broken limb on an old dirty mat of wool, and corrup- 
tion everywhere, as the limb had not been moved or 

"5 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

washed since the first time. The stench was some- 
thing horrible as the doctor bent over to wash the 
foot. The Tibetan teacher who was with him said 
he couldn't stand it, that it made him sick, and he 
got away; but every day Johnny and the doctor 
washed and bandaged and cleaned it. Johnny had to 
wash and boil the bandages, and pick off the dead lice, 
so that they might be used again, and Mr. and Mrs. 
Ogden sent the old fellow white rice and milk. The 
mistress said : "Are you wasting rice on that old man ? 
He is of no use any more; let him die/' And he 
did die. 

These Tibetans have the mixture of good and bad 
that is in every human being. It is easy to say, and 
it removes so much responsibility to say: "Let them 
alone. They are better off. They are used to dirt 
and filth, and it does n't matter." 

"The butterfly upon the road 
Preaches contentment to the toad." 



116 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Tibetan Characteristics. 

"The heart of man is the only deceitful heart in nature." 
(A Tibetan saying.) 

Because of lack of sanitary conditions and the 
proper care and nourishment it is impossible for a 
baby who is not of the strongest to survive. The 
death-rate must be very high, for sometimes if the 
mother dies the poor little thing is fed tsamba and 
butter at once, and milk that is extremely filthy. So 
the little chap soon dies and is thrown into the river, 
and there is more for those who are left. Thus only 
the heartiest grow to manhood and womanhood. 

First of all the Tibetan impresses the beholder 
with the fact that he is a splendid animal : tall, strong, 
stout, and lithe; able to endure any amount of climb- 
ing and walking, with no apparent fatigue. The alti- 
tude seems to have little effect upon these big, husky 
fellows with swelling muscles and stout limbs, and 
even in the coldest weather they go with the right arm 
bare, able to endure more than the yak, perhaps be- 
cause their food is grain and butter, with raw meat, 
while the yak have no food except the grass they can 
graze. 

They seem a merry, happy-go-lucky, good-natured 

117 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

people; but over all and in all they do hang the 
tragedy of superstition and the demons that always 
surround them. Perhaps a bit of this and the cen- 
turies of darkness through which they have come are 
expressed in their music. There is a note of pathos 
in it, as in the Negro melodies at home, and it is 
said that in music unconsciously is expressed the un- 
dertone of gladness or sadness as it exists in the 
human heart. Their songs are quite imaginative, 
many of them telling of their mountains and of happi- 
ness that might be possible. They are in many ways 
like children who are grown, with passions that are 
not controlled, and with no moral sense whatever. 

A man came to Mr. Ogden to be one of his teach- 
ers. He asked him if there was anything he was 
hiding from him, or had he come to him for protection 
in any way, and the man said, "No;" he had killed a 
man, but he had settled for that, and had paid his 
relatives a number of rupees, and that was why he 
was so poor, but that was all finished. It is a custom 
among them, in case of a murder, to accept so much 
money from the murderer and call it "square." 

A strange mixture of brutality and kindness are 
these people, with hearts "even as yours and mine." 
People that turn their old mothers and fathers out to 
die or beg, and lay them outside on the ground until 
they do die when they become too weak to beg or care 
for themselves. People that pass and repass a child dy- 
ing in the street. People that put such loads on their 
donkeys that great pieces of skin are worn off their 
backs. People that would rather starve a dog to 

118 



TIBETAN CHARACTERISTICS 

death than kill one, yet will give a corner to a beggar 
to stay in. Will feed the lamas with their tsamba and 
tea, love their children the same as we do, share their 
last bite with a friend, generous to a fault, and whose 
hearts respond to sympathy very quickly. 

A woman in a village where Dr. Shelton went 
once a week to take medicine to those who were ill 
there, had a little child a year and a half or two years 
old, and he nearly always took the little fellow a 
piece of bread or something to eat. On one trip he 
asked for the baby, and the old grandma with tears 
rolling down her cheeks said he was dead. When the 
mother came in he laid his hand on her shoulder in 
sympathy to try to comfort her and tell her the baby 
was safe in the other world with Jesus, and the tears 
poured like rain. The daily struggle for a bite to eat 
must go on ; there was no hope in her heart, and none 
to give her sympathy or speak a word of consolation. 
Among them are people with hearts big and generous, 
who would rather die than oppress the tenants who 
owe the lamasery. 

The treasurer of one of the big lamaseries in 
Tachienlu had charge of a certain district, and from 
these tenants he must collect so much grain and but- 
ter or rupees for payment on the land. Crops had 
failed, and he had loaned and loaned. There were 
only a few pecks of barley for one year ; crops failed, 
and they were hungry, and could not pay, and he had 
loaned the seed again. The king was asking for 
money and urging that he collect the rent and pay 
at once. He needed the money for his own use, and 

119 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

the grain to feed his great number of servants. The 
old fellow's heart ached for his poor people, but he 
dare not refuse to obey the king's request. One even- 
ing after he came home from seeing his tenants and 
knowing the utter impossibility of forcing them to 
pay their two or three years' rent with nothing or 
reporting such a condition to the king, the old man 
drank a lot of wine and thrust his sword through his 
heart, and the others dare not tell the king how or 
why he died, only reporting his death. 

Most Tibetans carry swords, and their fights are 
quite often very fierce ; but if they have n't a sword 
handy, a stone will do, and it makes a pretty severe 
weapon. 

Two men were quarreling because a donkey be- 
longing to one of them had gotten into the other man's 
field and did some damage to his grain. They used 
stones, or rather one of them did, and the one owning 
the field pounded the other fellow up pretty well. 
However, the official found it out, and the one who 
did the pounding had a square board placed on his 
neck and was sent to sit in the grain field where the 
fight occurred and was bidden to pay the doctor's bill 
of eight rupees. 

Another Tibetan called for Dr. Shelton to come 
and fix him up, but the official did n't find out about 
his case and that he had been fighting. He said he 
fell downstairs; but for a fall like that it was pretty 
severe, for it cut his face, slit his nostril and lip, 
and cut a gash above the eye. The fact about the 
matter was that he had been drunk and fighting, and 

120 



TIBETAN CHARACTERISTICS 

had been hit with a stone a few times. He told the 
truth when he found out the official would not be in- 
formed. 

Revenge is a strong element in the makeup of a 
Tibetan character and enters even into the biting in 
two of a louse — with the sentiment, "You bite me, and 
I '11 bite you." Forgiveness is an element that does 
not enter into their code of morals at all. If it is im- 
possible to take out their revenge by physical force, 
they can pray to their idols and have them kill the man. 

An old man with hair in matted gray tangles, a 
prayer-wheel in one hand, a rosary in the other, and 
walking each day around and around a mani pile of 
carved stone covered with prayers, and muttering the 
prayer with his lips, walked every day near the lama- 
sery at Batang saying hundreds of prayers every 
minute to lay up good deeds for himself. 

But it is a religion of fear, and not love. A fear 
of punishment in the hereafter. Thus they strive for 
merit and the hope that they may become absolute 
nothingness as quickly as possible in the hereafter, so 
that in the different lives they must live before this 
annihilation comes they may escape as much punish- 
ment as possible. 

One day a living Buddha came into the study. 
He happened to pick up a large volume of Dante's 
"Inferno," illustrated by Dore, and he remarked, 
"Why, this is just like our books. This is our hell, too. 
See, here are some in boiling water, some head down- 
ward in pits, some the snakes are biting, and some 
frozen into the ice. This must be our book ; you have 

121 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

just translated it." But we felt a bit ashamed that 
our house should harbor Tibetan hells, and wondered 
where in the world Dante had dreamed his ghastly 
dreams that have been so truly pictured by the great 
artist ! 

A superstitious faith in the power of the lamas to 
bring them good or ill is a strong element in the Ti- 
betan makeup. Any piece of old garment worn by a 
man considered holy, and the laying of his hands on 
their heads, his prayers, and his sprinkling with holy 
water they firmly believe will bring good luck and 
ward off all evil. If things go wrong, the man is 
bad and the evil spirits are managing his affairs ; but 
if he is good, as their standards go, he is lucky and the 
good spirits are the ruling power. 

But withal the Tibetan is a good, healthy animal, 
with a generous heart, and will love devotedly, when 
he does love, and serve most faithfully, trusting im- 
plicitly; but if he dislikes you he will get just as far 
away as possible, and stay there. But these people 
respond to love and know instinctively real love or 
love assumed, and when they decide not to fear the 
lamas and become Christians, they will serve with 
devoted hearts and with one purpose, to help "others" 
and, if need be, suffer martyrdom of the fiercest for 
their belief in the Christ. 



122 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Results, 

"I pray thee, then, 

Write me as one that loves his fellow-men, 

* * * * 

And lo ! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest." 

The following is the card that came on July 20th, 
as this manuscript was being written: 

"Batang, Sunday, May 21, 191 1. 
"Dear Dr. ShEi/ton : It is surprising how our 
attendance at church holds out. To-day at our regular 
service the house was jammed full of Chinese, Tibetan 
women, and children. There was hardly room to 
breathe, but the talk was listened to with deathly 
silence. Certainly we are getting a chance to sow 
some seed, and may it spring up and grow! 
"Yours as ever, 

"Jas. C. Ogden." 

Is n't it wonderful what our little doctor's coming 
did for Tibet? The Lord's plan was so entirely dif- 
ferent from ours. How much we had to learn before 
we could be used ! After our little doctor's going we 
felt so perfectly powerless and utterly unable to take 

123 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

up the load and go on again, that we were of no use, 
and had better give it all up. But when we were 
all on our knees in humbleness, and ready to say, "We 
are nothing; but use us, O Father, if it be possible 
in the face of all this" — then He began to use us. Mr. 
Ogden's great revival began, and more than two hun- 
dred came in that raw land, in that young station, con- 
fessing their sins of robbery and murder and trying 
to quit opium and wine-drinking, asking that he go 
into their homes and tear down their idols, which he 
so gladly did, leaving in their places the Lord's Prayer. 
Many of the Chinese confessed their immorality and 
the great sin of leaving an old mother or father un- 
cared for in their homes, while they ran away or joined 
the army. Many sins which, if their official had 
known of them, a few heads less might have been the 
consequence. 

About seventeen have been baptized at the begin- 
ning of this year (1912), and still the interest grows 
and the people come and listen, many of them in order 
and quietness, and the Lord's Word never returns 
void. 

From one of Mr. Ogden's letters comes this word : 
"To-day our chapel was crowded beyond capacity. 
Baptized one young man, a Chinese scholar, and he 
promises to be a very earnest and useful Christian 
man. One school teacher, who at first asked that he 
be not required to read Scripture at services, because 
he didn't believe in Christianity, has now professed 
his faith in Christ, but has not yet been baptized." 

There is persecution in it, too. One of the boys 
124 



RESULTS 

baptized at Tachienlu was asked to go and remain in 
the mission school at Batang. His father refused. A 
year or so later he was sent to the government school 
there, and never permitted to go to the church or 
Sunday school, or even to visit in the homes of the 
missionaries. He was a fine lad, and his cross was n't 
easy. Lately he was severely beaten, and his father 
took him home, for no other reason — as far as can be 
discovered — than that he was a Christian. 

Among those who came to Mr. Ogden during the 
revival was Jan Tsen, his Tibetan teacher. He was 
a hard wine-drinker. After his morning duties were 
over he would always have his bowl or two of wine, 
and it was making him a physical wreck and very 
nervous, as the wine is made from fermented barley 
and is a kind of white whisky, with from fifty to sixty 
per cent of alcohol in it. During the revival he came 
bringing his wine-cup, and said he wanted to be bet- 
ter and would not drink any more. The story of this 
man is a very interesting one and the end of it not 
yet in sight. Jan Tsen was a man from the district 
called Derge, in which such fine hammered copper- 
work is done and where swords are made, all by hand 
and with the crudest tools. 

Mr. Ogden employed him in August, 1907, and he 
stayed with him in Tachienlu some two years, and then 
with his wife and little girl came to Batang, remaining 
with him until May, 19TO. His wife, little girl, and 
his baby boy, about one year old, born since coming 
to Batang, had been coming to church, and the little 
girl was learning to read. He knew a lot about the 

125 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

Bible and could explain almost any part, having gone 
over it and over it in Tibetan as he taught Mr. Ogden. 
The hope was, if the mother and father never became 
Christians, the two little children would come to the 
school and eventually be led to Christ. One day he 
came and said he had to return to Tachienlu. As 
he was Mr. Ogden's personal teacher and his school 
teacher and translator, it was like losing his right 
arm to give him up. He was very trustworthy and 
could be depended upon for everything, and with it 
all was his knowledge of Jesus and the hope that we 
all had that some day he might be a Christian. 

This is how Jan Tsen came to go to Tachienlu. 
Some time back the big abbot of the yellow-cap mon- 
astery in Tachienlu had died, and search had to be 
made for his reincarnation. So the lamas cast lots to 
see in which town would be found the reincarnated 
abbot, and the lot fell upon Batang. A very holy lama 
was journeying from Tachienlu to Lassa, the sacred 
Tibetan capital, by prostrating himself all the way. 
He would only travel a little bit every day, his hands 
shod with wood as he measured his length, marking 
it with his outstretched arms ; then rising, stepping to 
the mark, and prostrating himself again; and so on 
and on through the cold, over the mountains and roads 
— endless roads. 

This lama brought a letter, and he was to choose 
the baby — and he chose Jan Tsen's baby; the little 
lad being then just a little over a year old. "Old 
Giggy" ("Giggy" being teacher in Tibetan) said at 
first he would not go to Tachienlu with the baby. He 

126 



RESULTS 

had been fighting the affair for some three or four 
months, but finally he and his wife went to see the 
big lama at his place, and he said if they did n't go 
in that month the baby would die the next month. So 
that settled it, and they left on May 15th for Tachi- 
enlu. It is a great honor to have the baby chosen as 
the great abbot, and gives the parents unlimited money 
and power. But after the baby is weaned it belongs 
to the lamasery, and the mother is not allowed to kiss 
or carry it again, as she is unclean to her own baby 
boy who is to be a great priest. He at once dons the 
red-and-yellow garments of his holy order, and wears 
them forever. The Tibetan teacher said he would re- 
turn after the baby was weaned, and he did. He is 
now Mr. Ogden's right-hand man in the mission. 

Perhaps one of the greatest problems we have to 
face is the problem of our own little ones. Bless the 
babies! — our babies who came to us in this foreign 
land. What a comfort they are, and what sunshine 
they bring with them ! They are not consciously miss- 
ing the beautiful easy things at home, nor the clean, 
wide streets and beautiful music. They are always 
busy, always happy, and can get into* just as much 
mischief here as there. Perhaps "papa" and "mamma" 
will be said in the native tongue first, but it sounds 
just as sweet as it does in America. 

They are greater missionaries than any of us, for 
they speak the language as the people do, and there 
is no chance to misunderstand them. When going 
into Batang the people were afraid of us, but when we 
stopped for the night and they saw the children play- 

127 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

ing they would come near them, and soon lost all 
fear of us, too. 

To educate our children properly is perhaps the 
hardest problem, and that has not yet been solved. To 
leave them in America and let them forget father and 
mother, or to remember that they were too busy with 
missionary work to care for them, seemed impossible. 
For the mother to stay in America with them and let 
Dr. Shelton go back for his heaviest year's work and 
be without a home and them, seemed also impossible ; 
so we believe that taking them with us is best : taking 
the course of study, the books necessary, and teaching 
them ourselves. Travel in itself is an education. So 
we leave the result with Him who guards and guides 
us, knowing that only the problem of one day at a 
time is given us to solve, and trusting Him for strength 
to do whatever He wills. 

Now everywhere are the open doors of opportunity. 
Men come asking for medicine, for Dr. Shelton to go 
to their homes and help their sick and suffering. They 
are not yet asking for the gospel, as that is the big 
step yet in the land ; but they will soon know that 
with the medicine goes something that is strange and 
new, that is love and sympathy and help and the name 
of Jesus ; and when a Tibetan becomes a Christian he 
will be no weakling, and soon the world can say: 

"There is but one homeland, that is where God is ; 
There is but one foreign land, and that is of sin." 



128 



o P 



Wg 
p p 



p 



O 







h3 



c« cr 

r _ c+ P CO 

2 o fT2 



_*p « 



CD 1-2 



si 



n> o 



^s<3 s: 

P n> ^ >-* 



h-.P 

3 a* 



?'§* 




CHAPTER XV. 

Good-Bye to Batang. 

"The inner side of every cloud 

Is always bright and shining; 
I therefore turn my clouds about 
And always wear them inside out 

To show the silver lining." 

The: first seven years of service were ended, and 
it was time to go home for a while. Good-byes are 
hard things to say, always. Perhaps there is no better 
way to close this book than by the following little ar- 
ticle written shortly after the arrival in America: 

Tell you how I got home from Batang? Well, 
I can, but I do n't want to ; I 'm home now, resting 
and playing and just looking at these beautiful, clean 
American things, at the pretty churches, and listening 
to the music that makes the tears come whenever I 
hear it. It seems to me it would be easy to be good 
in America. 

We left Batang on October 8th. As I couldn't 
walk, I was carried downstairs and put into the sedan 
chair. (I had fallen down a mountain gully, with a 
horse on top of my leg, and it had been broken and 
badly crushed.) Dr. Shelton was draped around with 
a few silk strips; my chair was likewise decorated; 
fire-crackers were fired, and we were off. Many of 
9 129 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

the natives went a piece outside the city with us ; but 
the best sight was a long line of Dr. Shelton's opium 
patients standing in a row, giving him the Chinese 
good-bye ; then his Tibetan teacher, with tears in his 
eyes, telling him to "go slowly." 

It was hardest to leave Mrs. Ogden and the dear 
little babies. Finally we were off on the long journey 
to America. I could n't walk one step ; so every night 
I was carried on a man's back into the inns, and every 
morning carried out and put in the carrying-chair 
for the day. Most days the traveling was pleasant, 
though we had one snowstorm, rain a day or so, the 
strong wind one day — so strong I thought I would be 
blown off the mountain road ; but I was n't. We met 
caravan after caravan of loaded yak, and I was always 
sure one of their big horns would stick into my chair 
and rip it to pieces ; but perhaps they were as afraid 
of me as I was of them. 

I do n't know how to tell you of our going away. 
It was sad and joyful too. It was hard to leave Mr. 
and Mrs. Ogden and the children, but it was good 
to know that so many Tibetans were friends and were 
sorrowful to see us leave. The women ran along by 
the chair giving me milk to drink in a bowl with bits 
of butter on the edges, and we all cried. Perhaps they 
are dirty, and I would n't have cared so much a year 
or two before, but sometimes a greater love than you 
have known before grasps you, and you love more 
abundantly, and we love them even more than they 
love us, though I think they felt the love as little chil- 
dren feel it. 

130 



GOOD-BYE TO BATANG 

Many of the women took off their rings and gave 
them to me as a parting gift — precious to them, but 
of how much more value to me! — showing the love 
they felt. It was much in money from people so very 
poor as they. I do n't know the way to tell you how 
we felt. It was not ourselves that inspired it, but He 
whom we serve, within us, that made us feel so close 
to them. It is n't easy to live in that land, no ; but 
there are compensations, and you feel that you want 
to return, for the Master seems nearer over there than 
here. And may some who read this volunteer to go. 
You can travel where my babies have been. "No 
money," yo<u say ? Faith and prayer would bring more 
than we could use. 

We have been happy since coming home, meeting 
our friends once more, but Oh, so grieved to hear of 
the death of Mr. Ogden's baby boy ! Are you pray- 
ing for them over there now ? Their hearts are very 
sad, and we wish we might have been with them at 
such a time. We are safely home. We feel that we 
have been marvelously protected on all the long jour- 
ney and sent home for a purpose. 

What the purpose of the homecoming was, only 
the future can tell. Now, shall we say good-bye, 
you and I, dear friends ? You know us all ; those here 
and those in the "bright land." Let me name them 
again to you before we part. Little Bertha Ogden 
left us in Tachienlu for the "other side," while the 
rest of us were to wait a little longer. Mr. and Mrs. 
Ogden and baby Ruth, Dr. Hardy, Dr. Shelton, with 
little Dorris and Dorothy and me. Then our Dr. Loftis 

131 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

and baby Jim, who lie buried on the road to Lassa — 
"God's last milestone to Tibet." 

Protect us, O Master, in Thy service, and may we 
all say with our little doctor, when it is Thy will that 
we serve Thee no longer here, Lord Jesus, take us 
to be with the others whom Thou hast loved and called 
to Thee! Keep us humble, near to Thee, that Thou 
canst work through us ! Give faith to those we leave, 
and to us, O Father, give strength and love to do Thy 
bidding even to the uttermost! 



132 



CHAPTER XVI. 

The Present Situation, One Year 
Later, the Close of 1912. 

"Men, my brothers, men the workers, men reaping something 

new; 
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they 

shall do. 
I dipt into the future far as human eye could see, 
Saw the Vision of the World, and all the wonder that 

would be. 

"Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags 

were furled, 
In the parliament of man, the federation of the world. 
There the common sense of most shall hold a fitful realm 

in awe, 
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law." 

In the early fall of 191 1 Dr. Sun Yat Sen at 
last succeeded in bringing about the revolution he had 
spent so many years in instigating. The Chinese were 
successful in overthrowing the Manchu dynasty that 
had ruled absolutely for almost three hundred years. 
Within three months the rigid monarchy was over- 
thrown and the dragon flag trampled underfoot and 
the new flag of five colors was hoisted over the infant 
Republic of China. The whole of China was in an 
uproar, seething from one end to the other with new 

'33 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

thoughts and new ideas. It spread like the waves of 
the sea, from the coast to the interior places. It was 
impossible for this state of affairs not to affect Tibet, 
the last province that China was acquiring and fitting 
under Chinese rule, watching for any opportunity to 
throw off the Chinese yoke and regain her old power 
and authority. Farther and farther west spread the 
disturbance and unrest. All food supplies and tele- 
graphic communication was cut off from Batang. 
Mail and money ceased coming. For a time the mis- 
sionaries there felt quite safe, indeed safer than any- 
where else in the old empire, believing that they were 
so far inland that the trouble would not reach them. 
Rumors of all kinds reached them; the garrison of 
Chinese soldiers that had been stationed there had been 
ordered to Chentu to help in quelling the war in that 
vicinity. The China Inland Mission missionaries from 
Tachienlu fled westward to Batang; also the French 
bishop, priests, and nuns. It had been the plan of the 
Tibetans to capture a foreigner and hold him as ran- 
som until their seals of authority were returned by the 
Chinese, who had taken and retained them. Upon the 
arrival of the two young men from Tachienlu they all 
thought the best thing was to leave and go southward, 
at least for a time, and then return again. Upon go- 
ing to the Chinese official and asking for protection, 
he said he could not give it, as his soldiers were gone ; 
and so he told them to go, and loaned them money 
with which to leave. Subsequent developments have 
proved beyond a doubt that they all pursued the 
wisest course possible. The United States minister 

134 



THE PRESENT SITUATION 

urged that all residents, especially in cases where there 
were women and children, in interior localities be re- 
moved to places of safety. They had ten days of warn- 
ing in which to leave their homes, the little church, 
and all those who loved them. Mrs. Ogden, soon to 
become a mother, must make this journey into an un- 
known land, over an unknown road, and through and 
into untold dangers. Let me tell you of their going 
as Mr. Ogden wrote it for me: "The day before and 
the day we left Batang there was a continuous stream 
of Chinese and Tibetans bringing presents of flour, 
bread, eggs, meat, butter, and little gifts of silver rings 
and ornaments. There were sad faces everywhere, in 
the yard and in the house, and some one sobbing the 
whole time. Gayeng Ongder brought leather-covered 
boxes for our things and helped us greatly. We left 
the houses as they were, a Tibetan caretaker in each 
home, while the official sealed the doors. As we left 
there were many good-byes and cries, and tears be- 
yond description. The women giving Mrs. Ogden 
their rings, and weeping as they gave. We were doing 
the best we knew. Had I been a single man, Hardy 
and I could have remained awhile, as did Mr. Cun- 
ningham and the China Inland Mission. In my own 
heart I knew I was leaving for the sake of my wife 
and child and unborn babe. Whippings, executions, 
and punishments of all kinds were occurring daily 
under our eyes in the city, from the time that the sol- 
diers rebelled in Shangchen, the year before, but we 
always hoped for the best and did n't expect to have 
to leave. The men went horseback and on foot, as 

135 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

they could. Mrs. Ogden rode a part of the way, then 
had a chair, and part of the road had to creep and 
crawl over rocks, as it was too rough for the men 
to carry the chair. Little Ruth was carried on a faith- 
ful Tibetan's back in a basket. Part of the forty-four 
days' journey was along a narrow cliff high up on 
the mountain side, where a slip or a fall, a misstep 
would have hurled them to death, one thousand feet 
below." Through the robber country they had to go ; 
and upon reaching Talifu received message after mes- 
sage, by wire, letter, and runners, urging them to hurry 
on to the coast. Into places they went where there 
had been fighting and beheading. Often the officials 
were afraid to let them remain for the night. Once 
they kept a special train waiting in case of a riot. At 
another time they must wait until a battle was fought. 
Through it all they were marvelously protected on 
that long, perilous journey. Days and days of this 
travel did Mrs. Ogden endure, brave, patient, and 
sweet through it all. At last reaching Yunnanfu, they 
took the railway to Hongkong, and thence by steamer 
to Shanghai and home, to learn afterwards that three 
days after they left Talifu missionaries were killed 
there. After the long sea journey of twenty-three days 
from Shanghai, exhausted and worn, they reached Los 
Angeles, and fifteen days later little Walter Harold 
was born in the hospital at Los Angeles; all of them 
tended and cared for by the loving hands of the Living- 
link church there, which supports Mrs. Ogden on the 
field, m 

Just now the Dalai lama, who has been for some 

136 



New Missionaries to Tibet. 




H. A. Baker. 





Mrs. H. A. Baker. 




Dr. and Mrs. W. M. Hardy. 



Those Who Have Fallen Asleep. 





James Clarence Ogden. 
Dr. Z. S. Loftis. Dr. Susie Rijnhart Moy< 



THE PRESENT SITUATION 

years a refugee in India, has returned to Lassa and 
started a rebellion against the Chinese Government in 
his dominion of Tibet. As nearly all the soldiers had 
been sent out of the towns to help in the revolution 
in China, the garrison left was small indeed and fell 
easy prey to the vengeance of the Tibetans, who mas- 
sacred them all and established Tibetan authority once 
more. The treaty as it exists at present between China 
and Tibet is that the Chinese Amban and his escort 
remain in Lassa, all other soldiers being sent out, arms 
remaining under seal. Only Chinese traders being 
allowed to remain within the country of Tibet. 

The Tibetans at Litang captured the city, killed the 
garrison stationed there, and gained complete control 
of the city once more. All territory west of Tachienlu, 
the city where our station was located for five years, 
was in a state of rebellion. The king was deposed, 
his yamen burned and looted. Now the Chinese are 
gaining a foothold again, sending in several thousand 
soldiers, have restored the king to his place again, so 
that he may aid them with cattle and grain, as they 
try again to take over Tibet. The last heard from 
Batang was that our little possessions were still safe 
and the members of the little native church still faith- 
ful. Dr. Hardy, who had been doing Red Cross work 
during the war, is now studying Chinese in Shanghai 
and is soon to wed Miss Nina Palmer. Mr. and Mrs. 
Baker, of Buffalo, who left in. May, 1912, are study- 
ing Chinese in Nanking — all awaiting the time when 
we can be permitted to join them and, with Mr. and 
Mrs. Ogden, all go back to the little station at Batang. 

137 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

This time will come if we are only patient and are 
willing to wait until the Lord is ready for us to go 
on, and the work there can go forward as He wills, 
and as we are ready to do what He requires. Let me 
close this little sketch by a talk of Dr. Shelton's : 

" 'Om mani padme horn, Om mani padme horn/ 
Day after day, month after month, year after year this 
is the prayer the Tibetan prays without ceasing. Not 
satisfied with saying it alone he uses a prayer-wheel, 
which he turns incessantly; not satisfied with these 
two methods, he also carries in his other hand a string 
of beads, which he counts continuously. So he gets 
three shots at it all at one time. It is pathetic in that 
it is the best expression of his heart's search for God. 
You see him on his road to Lassa prostrating himself 
day after day, measuring his own length, taking from 
three to five years to make his journey to the holy city. 
Tibet is the last hermit nation on earth. It is some- 
times called the roof of the world, the football of the 
nations, the keystone in the arch of Asia, the home of 
the pope of Buddhism. Nobody wants it, yet nobody 
wants any one else to have it. There it lies, the last 
stronghold of Satan, where paganism is making its 
last stand against the onward march of the gospel. 

"In all Tibet there is not one church, not one 
schoolhouse, not one hospital, not one missionary 
home. For fifty years the Moravians, the greatest mis- 
sionary people in the world, on the Indian side have 
been waiting to get in. The first generation are dying, 
the second generation are getting old, and the third 

138 



THE PRESENT SITUATION 

generation are on the field ; but they are still waiting. 
It seemed, however, that Dr. Susie Rijnhart was es- 
pecially led of God when she returned to Tibet, in 
that we, with her, were led to the Chinese side, where 
the border is a much more flexible affair than are the 
cast-iron boundaries of British rule. We stopped first 
at Tachienlu ; and then, by the political movements of 
the Chinese Government, we were allowed to go on 
five hundred miles farther, to Batang; and there, five 
hundred miles from a postoffice, seven hundred miles 
to the nearest doctor, we, your representatives, are 
working for the redemption of this the last heathen 
nation of earth, into the capital of which no Christian 
missionary has ever as yet been allowed to enter. The 
work will not be done until every man in all Tibet has 
had a chance to hear the gospel, and this will require 
six stations — one at Batang, one at Chamdo, one at 
Lassa, and three others in different parts of the coun- 
try. We already have one at Batang, and just last 
summer, before they were forced to leave, Dr. Hardy 
and Mr. Ogden were permitted for the first time to 
cross over into Tibet and to cover a stretch of terri- 
tory as large as the State of Kansas, and still five hun- 
dred miles further on established the first little Chris- 
tian congregation on Tibetan soil since time began. 
"By having these six stations, and by itinerating 
for a distance of nine days in every direction, every 
man in all Tibet will be within reach of the gospel. 
The cost thus far has not been light. Many nations 
and many people have contributed toward the price 

139 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 

which the church is paying for the redemption of the 
roof of the world. William Soutter, a Swede, laid 
down his life for Tibet, and he is buried at the foot 
of the great snow mountain, three days east of Batang. 
Dr. Rijnhart's baby lies sleeping in a cracker-box, 
buried in a glacier far up to the north. Her husband's 
bones also lie bleaching in one of the rivers far down 
toward Lassa. It seemed that God wished this family 
to pay a heavy price, for, with baby and husband gone, 
their payments were not yet all made, and Dr. Rijn- 
hart herself made the last payment that it was possible 
for her to make, and her body lies buried beneath the 
snows of Canada. Then you know Ogden has had 
to contribute rather heavily, too. He has made two 
payments, and one of his babies is sleeping at Tachi- 
enlu and little Jim sleeps in Batang. Then a widowed 
mother down in Texas was called upon for a payment, 
too, and Dr. Loftis, who, when he saw Soutter' s grave, 
three days before he reached Batang, that night wrote 
this prayer in his diary: 'O Lord, if it be Thy will 
that I too should fill a grave in this lonely land, may 
it be one that shall be a landmark and an inspiration 
to others, and may I go to it willingly if it is Thy 
will!' And in less than two months later he was 
filling that lonely grave, and he too is sleeping at 
Batang. The price has not all been paid yet. How 
many more payments shall be required we do not ask 
to know. When they have all been paid, then will 
Tibet have become one of the Kingdoms of our Lord 
and Savior Jesus Christ, and long before we shall all 

140 



THE PRESENT SITUATION 

gather tip yonder at the foot of the cross with Dr. 
Loftis, Dr. Rijnhart, and with all those whose lives 
have been part of the price, and with those whom they 
shall bring with them; long before this, I say, 'Om 
Mani Padme Horn' will have become 'Our Father who 
art in heaven/ " 



141 



DEC 30 1912 



5 L 



